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Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

• rasz 6y ago
  >“hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.” banned for posting memes like https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1354390735425036288/photo/1 https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/135439073542503628...
  • calvinmorrison 6y ago
    That's atrocious! How could anyone post something so mean on reddit group!
    • whymauri 6y ago
      For large groups, Discord is generally more strict about community guidelines than Reddit.
      • neartheplain 6y ago
        For large public* groups. The large private groups are basically 1990s Yahoo! chat rooms, complete with racism, bullying, criminal activity and child grooming. They only get caught when they get infiltrated, or when members self-report. https://www.wsj.com/articles/discord-where-teens-rule-and-parents-fear-to-tread-11560245402 https://www.wsj.com/articles/discord-where-teens-rule-and-pa... https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/01/29/discord-the-2-billion-gamers-paradise-coming-to-terms-with-data-thieves-child-groomers-and-fbi-investigators/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/01/29/disco...
        • golemiprague 6y ago
          Indeed, I saw it with my own eyes when my daughter went on it, luckily we manage to realise what is going on. It is crazy that they ban WSB or Trump but let pedos do their thing without a problem.
  • mc32 6y ago
    The r word isn’t nice. But that cannot be the reason to ban the server. This sounds like an excuse. They mention fraud several times -but say it’s NOT because of fraud— but I almost perceive a wink when they mention it like that.
    • luxuryballs 6y ago
      You’d be surprised what kind of asinine bullshit they will ban a server over. Feels like everywhere you go these days some real or virtual administrator is pre-determining how much risk you’re allowed to put yourself in.
      • BoorishBears 6y ago
        I joined the server and the first thing I saw was a mod saying the N word with hard R. Check their history and there's literally pages of it. I didn't appreciate that so I reported it and left. - Lots of people confusing this with not liking WSB. The other WSB discord which was linked to the subreddit was fine even though it was barely moderated. Rough around the edges like WSB tends to be... but fine as a place to hang out and see funny things. - This second server was extreme even by WSB standards. The joke is "4chan found a bloomberg terminal" but really it's like Reddit found one... no one is as down right randomly gross or racist as people are on deep end 4chan or Reddit would have banned it a long time. This server was really like if the worst part of 4chan pretended to know what a stock is. It wasn't even coherent by WSB standards, and the signal to noise made WSB proper look like an actual Bloomberg Terminal
        • EVdotIO 6y ago
          Well, it is "Like 4chan found a Bloomberg terminal".
          • deleted 6y ago
            [deleted]
          • evanextreme 6y ago
  • tidepod12 6y ago
    WSB is notorious for also posting a lot of anti-LGBT slurs (for example, one of WSBs favorite insults is calling someone a "gay bear", or more commonly a rainbow emoji followed by a bear emoji, or even calling people f*gs). Also worth noting that the Discord group is so much worse than WSB the subreddit. Sometimes on the Discord server there are just people spamming the N word for no reason.
    • Alupis 6y ago
      And who exactly is hurt here? I've never heard of this subreddit before, nor it's Discord Server, but I do know that one doesn't just stumble upon either on accident. The only people being hurt here are the ones that went looking to be hurt. What we have here is a group of immature people, emboldened by internet anonymity, saying stupid things for the "lolz". Does anyone think they'll be more mature because their server was banned? Of course not... they'll just make a new one, further emboldened by the obvious censorship. Let idiots be idiots, folks... we all know one when we see one.
      • f430 6y ago
        Recall not too long ago the drama over github when one of the employers simply said to "watch out for nazis" during the DC Capitol incident. We are at a point where certain languages are being banned and made illegal, you can't blame people for being worried that we are on the cusp of totalitarianism. The banning of discord and r/wsb going private is quite scary, especially given the timing. I guess hedge fund managers are just like mob bosses, they do not like being played. edit: why is it that ANY mention of the github nazi incident gets INSTANTLY mass downvoted and flagged? Every single comment about this on HN gets censored.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
        • lawnchair_larry 6y ago
          Because the woke left are fascists who are desperate to police people’s language.
  • snomad 6y ago
    Are they not familiar with the euphemism treadmill? http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/08/ableist-language-and-the-euphemism-treadmill/ http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/08/ableist-language-and-th...
    • rory 6y ago
      People saying "retard" isn't the real reason, they're just using it as an excuse. Powerful Wall Street types who gambled against them are losing money because of the hype train they've ignited and are crying to regulators. The discussion of coordination in the chat may be considered illegal and Discord doesn't want negative attention from regulators and the press.
  • nacho2sweet 6y ago
    Discord is gaming community chat room. They would have no users if they are banning for using the word "retard".
    • anticensor 6y ago
      > gaming community chat room A platform of gaming community chat rooms, actually.
• the_only_law 6y ago
  The subreddit seems to be private atm.
• markdown 6y ago
  r/WallStreetBets has gone offline as well: https://i.imgur.com/VySvxSL.png https://i.imgur.com/VySvxSL.png
  • voisin 6y ago
    Private. Not offline.
    • markdown 6y ago
      Same difference. Obviously a subreddit can't go offline without reddit going offline.
      • derision 6y ago
        It can be banned
      • solarkraft 6y ago
        To me "offline" would mean closed for everyone.
      • paxys 6y ago
        Going private is an action taken by subreddit moderators. Banning the sub is done by Reddit itself.
        • markdown 6y ago
          I never said anything about banning. Mods can take a sub offline (making it private). I don't know why we're even having this discussion.
• brink 6y ago
  Wouldn't it be nice if Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.. banned everyone, and humanity was forced to go back to a pre-social-media lifestyle.
  • paxys 6y ago
    And leave no way for common people to organize against the status quo. The establishment sure would love that. Why are you on HN then in the first place?
    • dx87 6y ago
      My history class must have skipped over the part where the american revolution was organized on twitter and facebook.
      • capableweb 6y ago
        Then maybe look outside your own borders for some other examples. The Arab Spring got great momentum from social media, and so do a lot of other efforts. Sometimes even bad efforts get momentum too. But it is possible to organize revolution via social media and other communication mediums.
      • konjin 6y ago
        It must have been a very bad history class then: >required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp.[1][2] Printed materials included legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers, and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies, and it had to be paid in British currency, not in colonial paper money.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_1765 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_1765 The printing press was the social media of the 18th century. And just like then the powers that be have no idea what to do with it and are trying to put the Ginnie back in the bottle.
      • munk-a 6y ago
        I think they actually coordinated with vines posted to their myspace pages... but easier out-of-band communication does lead to more general awareness of the populace. The American revolution might've happened much more quickly - or not at all when the Americans saw Bostonians dancing around in racist indian costumes and compared the relatively minor tax to living conditions back in England proper.
• nickik 6y ago
  That's what Matrix is for. They should have the money to pay for one at least.
• ve55 6y ago
  And they chose today as the best possible time to enact this ban? Really? I really think they should have put more thought into the timing of this decision; a lot of users are going to be upset and will suddenly start to realize that a single company has a monopoly on their online social life (this may seem like an exaggeration, but it feels quite true to me colloquially, especially if you're a younger US male and/or play video games). Regardless of how right or wrong this moderation choice may be, I hope that this accelerates the push for decentralization and encryption; the few companies that virtually all online humans use to communicate have far too much power over us, and we should be more willing to recognize that extreme centralization of power is dangerous. (One final note: (EDIT: subreddit is now public again) now that this caused the subreddit to be set to private which seems to have instantly caused $GME to start tanking in AH, they are going to be in for users that are much more upset than they are used to if the narrative decides that this ban caused the crash, if it does in fact last until tomorrow)
  • xiphias2 6y ago
    It worked, Gamestop postmarket price is down from market close.
    • easton 6y ago
      In the last 20-30 minutes too, which suggests it was purely because of WSB getting wacked. That's weird, it seems like the sentiment of the people investing in GameStop wouldn't be changed just because of this.
      • xiphias2 6y ago
        We'll see if the stock recovers or not, but I remember in 2014 Bitcoin's price bubble popping from over $200 because Bitstamp was DDOS-ed. It's a great strategy generally for timing bubble pops.
      • to11mtm 6y ago
        Paper hands...
      • 6y ago
• BelenusMordred 6y ago
  For all the uneasy feelings I get about the triggerhappy banning by these platforms, there's probably a light at end of the tunnel. Boot enough people and the better alternatives might actually flourish with network effects.
  • skarz 6y ago
    Wait you actually think that when people are banned they simply just "go away"? Vanish in to thin air? Problem solved?
    • llampx 6y ago
      The way bans on reddit have tended to work is that by dispersing the group, there's an additional barrier created to stop the spread of the idea. This has happened with fatpeoplehate, the trump reddit, and with the red pill reddit among others. Its not just a group of people of a similar knowledge level and similar ideas coming together, it is also new users happening across the subreddit and deciding to take part. Take away the new users and it becomes an echo chamber. This is what makes Youtube, Reddit and Facebook so powerful. They can choose who can stay on their platform, and how much discoverability their ideas have if they are allowed to stay on the platform.
      • ntsplnkv2 6y ago
        The only way to deal with it is through splitting these companies up - that's the only constitutional way, and we must start immediately. They're too big.
        • betwixthewires 6y ago
          They're not going to be too big for very long. Their size depends on people being there, and if they keep banning people they'll just get smaller. Once all the interesting people are banned the regular people will go where the interesting people are. They're about to have their blockbuster moment and no bailouts can stop it.
• kgin 6y ago
  I have no doubt the timing was extremely intentional.
  • qqn 6y ago
    The thought crossed my mind too, but if so then why?
    • f430 6y ago
      well the r/wsb subreddit has gone private too. We are experiencing technical difficulties based on unprecedented scale as a result of the newfound interest in WSB. We are unable to ensure Reddit's content policy and the WSB rules are enforceable without a technology platform that can support automation of this enforcement. WSB will be back. This seems like a DDOS attack on r/wsb well knowing that the moderators cannot keep up with moderation? Or is this simply a case of getting too popular for Reddit? The fact that discord was banned around the same time as r/wsb going private is suspect. edit: After hours market shows GME is has TANKED!!!! Closed at 345 and dipped to 248. Holy, there will be class action lawsuits for sure now. edit: I've been on the phone for 2 hours waiting for my broker to answer. All of this seems weird. They SUDDENLY have volatility and decide today is the day to stop answering my calls??? edit: /u/DeepFuckingValue's posts have all been wiped!!!!! WTF!
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • weston 6y ago
        r/wallstreetbets Edit: that seems to be private now too?
        • f430 6y ago
          check this out from 5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25868680#25935933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25868680#25935933 I think the SEC thread created this morning had something to do with going private. It isn't the first time they've gone private but this time with the discord being banned and all, im getting ban vibes. Look if Discord can ban WSB over some cuss words, imagine what Reddit can do. I'm on the phone with my broker as we speak and now I fear that this is a coordinated attack. edit: so after I made that comment about github's half assed apology towards the guy that they terminated for saying "watch out for nazis", those same group of people are downvoting and flagging every single one of my comments. AGAIN. You didn't care when people were bringing attention to the anti-semitic memes being posted on Github 4 years ago, now you want to bury every fucking comment, just like the angry hedge fund managers getting their revenge on serfs making a little money.
• konjin 6y ago
  It's going to be a long four years: https://twitter.com/jeneps/status/1354495049397055494 https://twitter.com/jeneps/status/1354495049397055494
• walrus01 6y ago
  The description of wallstreetbets is literally "as if 4chan found a bloomberg terminal", so I don't know what else anyone expected other than 4chan-like-behavior.
  • tokai 6y ago
    Wonder if they'll go to /biz/
    • nathanasmith 6y ago
      /biz/ has been flooded with r/wallstreetbets traffic for days and days now. /smg/ threads hit bump limit in 20 minutes sometimes ever since this GME thing really got going. It's even outdone the usual crypto posting on /biz/ which I didn't ever think would happen.
      • kache_ 6y ago
        finally
  • nexuist 6y ago
    Apparently a lot of people don't want there to be a place where 4chan-like-behavior can be found on the Internet.
    • fennecfoxen 6y ago
      And these people include the Discord operators!
    • walrus01 6y ago
      I'm sure there's plenty of technically minded Wall Street bets people who are capable of setting up synapse, for a self-hosted, non federated matrix/element based chat solution.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• kmfrk 6y ago
  Was the server partnered? Partner servers are subject to stricter scrutiny (ie the don't-make-us-look-bad-in-public rule).
• konjin 6y ago
  The subreddit is also ~banned~ private. A good time to shill Aether :https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/ Like reddit, but decentralized and distributed. They even have a wsb sub.
  • ketamine__ 6y ago
    Do they have mobile app?
• Tenoke 6y ago
  The subreddit is as of now private, too. Edit: for the curious, according to my open tabs minutes before going private the sub had '3,218,594 readers. 778,127 users here now' Edit2: The sub is back online and up to '3,577,830 readers' and counting.
  • adrr 6y ago
    Sub goes private all the time. It is nothing new.
• markdown 6y ago
  With his r/WallStreetBets posts and comments hidden (due to the sub going private), it's interesting to see the u/DeepFuckingValue's comments[1] from a year ago: The guy has turned $50k into $50M in the one year since those first comments were made, with half of that made yesterday. [1]. https://www.reddit.com/user/deepfuckingvalue https://www.reddit.com/user/deepfuckingvalue
• f430 6y ago
  this can't be a coincidence. r/wallstreetbets has gone private! is this because of the SEC??? or are we witnessing a Godfather 2 ending where Michael whacks everybody just before the credits roll? Something is incredibly fishy about this, the ban and subreddit going private happened not too far from each other. Really worried about what will happen on Friday, there is no way to read the wsb subreddit anymore!
• oars 6y ago
  Fascinating. Is Discord connected to Melvin Capital in anyway?
  • Nextgrid 6y ago
    I doubt it's connected directly, however Discord's only current and future revenue stream is "growth and engagement", aka they don't have any real product to sell and are bound to rely on the "goodwill" of future investors. In this case, it makes sense to try and appeal to them, even though from a purely moral point of view you could argue that the r/WSB people did nothing wrong and it's Melvin Capital (and whatever parent hedge fund is now bailing them out) who did wrong by betting more than they could afford to lose.
• AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  They'll ban you when you're talking politics, They'll ban you when you're trying to get your licks, They'll ban you when you try to make a buck, They'll ban you and say it's just your luck, But don't feel so all alone, Everybody will get banned. (With apologies to Bob Dylan...) Serious point, though: They can decide to ban (almost?) anyone at any point. They will state a justification, but it looks a lot like banning anyone whenever they decide to.
• gsich 6y ago
  What a sad excuse.
• zuhayeer 6y ago
  The Reddit just got set to private too: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • easton 6y ago
    The bots were getting overwhelmed, u/zjz said that they set up more strict moderation rules and were running into rate limiting due to the traffic. Maybe reddit can whitelist them or something.
  • loceng 6y ago
    Wow. Considering both the Discord server and the Subreddit are publicly available to everyone, there's no illegal activity that could have occurred on them. I wonder is someone trying to prevent the public/retail investors legally rallying on legal actions?
  • dang 6y ago
    There's a thread dedicated to that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935746 All the subtopics are bleeding through all the threads though.
• astine 6y ago
  For those of us not in the know, what is so special about today regarding WSB? I know there's a feud with short sellers going on, but I haven't been following the details.
  • colejohnson66 6y ago
    GameStop’s stock ($GME) literally doubled overnight as a Reddit community decided to fight short sellers. Then it blew up.
  • sillysaurusx 6y ago
    Someone went from 50k to 50M by igniting a short squeeze. All eyes were on the WSB subreddit, and discord server. Now both are private or offline. No one has any chance to coordinate now. Discord’s action is effectively market manipulation in a literal sense, because this is certainly going to affect the market. I’m curious why the sub went private though. EDIT: I regret my phrasing. I didn’t mean this was illegal market manipulation, just that discord is literally manipulating the market by cutting off one of two primary coordination channels. But they’re within their legal rights to do so, of course. EDIT2: WSB Subreddit is back; mods issued a statement: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6j4r9/where_do_we_go_from_here_and_who_is_going_to_step/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6j4r9/wher...
    • Tenoke 6y ago
      >I’m curious why the sub went private though. They considered making it private [and did briefly] during previous fiascos. At the time there were threads by the mods in which you can post so you are included but the alternative was by post history. It's very possible they've left e.g. the 10% most active posters in the sub and can still coordinate to an extent. Edit: That seems to be the case, as their new message is "WallStreetBets is under in tents load and is only for approved submitters. In the meantime, please enjoy some spaghetti. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW1GR7BECq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW1GR7BECq4" Edit2: Now changed to "We are experiencing technical difficulties based on unprecedented scale as a result of the newfound interest in WSB. We are unable to ensure Reddit's content policy and the WSB rules are enforceable without a technology platform that can support automation of this enforcement. WSB will be back.
• thepasswordis 6y ago
  Remember: they just want to ban the BAD guys. It’s just the bad guys they’re going to go after. They will never go after you as long as you’re the good guys. How much do you think it would cost to pay the top mod of /r/wsb (which is now private) to make the sub private? How much to some discord admins to ban the discord? Is that amount more or less than the billions these hedgies were losing?
  • throwaway789394 6y ago
    How much would would china have to pay Reddit/Twitter/FB to make sure discussions of Taiwan don’t proliferate. People just don’t seem to care about their freeze peach and it’s impact on democratic integrity.
• lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  Ridiculous. Can’t believe we’re raising a generation of such fragile people. The WSB banter is pretty tame, if not pretty juvenile. Who cares. Don’t join the chat if you don’t enjoy their company. That’s the route I took.
  • disgrunt 6y ago
    This has nothing to do with the banter and everything to do with who's ox is being gored in the short squeeze.
    • llampx 6y ago
      Exactly. Anyone can see through the mealy-mouthed ban explanation.
• sickygnar 6y ago
  Someone likely paid the platforms and/or admins to take them down
  • dawnerd 6y ago
    Or an investor.
  • LMYahooTFY 6y ago
    What is your assertion based on?
    • TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I'm guessing: probability estimates. Realistically speaking, they had every opportunity to enact this ban before, and freedom to do so after the #gamestonk bonanza dies down. So why act now?
      • notahacker 6y ago
        Realistically speaking those particular forums weren't major news stories and flooded with new users (many of them not working for hedge funds!) who don't like what they see before. From the point of view of someone with no stake in the outcome, the possibility some WSB regulars' strategy for cashing out their profits was based around these newbies being encouraged to buy as much GSE as possible probably isn't an argument in favour of delaying action
        • the8472 6y ago
          So rules are only enforced when things are in the news? > the possibility some WSB regulars' strategy for cashing out their profits was based around these newbies being encouraged to buy as much GSE as possible probably isn't an argument in favour of delaying action That argument would make sense if the justification of the ban had been about legality, not use of language. If it's about use of language then it's not relevant.
• skillpass 6y ago
  I notice certain pattern among some internet communities. Extreme hype / popularity around a community, followed by degeneration (or increased visibility of prior degeneracy) of that community, followed by bans and/or deplatforming. Off the top of my head FatPeopleHate, TheDonald, and recently Parler are prior examples, I bet there are others though. WallStreetBets seems like it's heading down a similar path. In fact, I bet a lot of the people in these communities overlap, though I have no proof.
  • isaacremuant 6y ago
    2 of those examples are entirely political and manipulated instances. The Donald was quarantined and moved out of site (not outright banned) under accusations of wanting to harm police (which was out of character considering all the our boys in blue memes). Then they were slowly destroyed, mods replaced and finally banned. In the meantime, dozens of subs called for death of cops before, during and after BLM and nothing happened. Parler was a twitter competitor and number 1 at that. The coordinated assault on it using moderation as an excuse was simply atrocious and hypocritical knowing what we know of Facebook and Twitter as tools for coordination and crime enablement. You're perpetuating the good vs bad narrative. Convenient, but false.
• liquidify 6y ago
  I think it is complete crap that companies using legal platform protections can ban people by arbitrarily declaring speech they don't like as hate speech. There should be legal requirements that any companies which enjoy platform protections must prove in a court of law that speech can accurately be classified as hateful before banning anyone.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • CivBase 6y ago
    They didn't even ban the people. They literally banned the server because individuals used inappropriate language on the server. That makes absolutely no sense.
    • canofbars 6y ago
      Its the job of the mods to ensure that the users of their group follow the rules. This situation seems bullshit but in general I think its quite logical to ban "servers" if the mods do not uphold the rules.
      • CivBase 6y ago
        > You know as well as I do that if you gather 250k people in one spot someone is going to say something that makes you look bad. That room was golden and the people that run it are awesome. We blocked all bad words with a bot, which should be enough, but apparently if someone can say a bad word with weird unicode icelandic characters and someone can screenshot it you don’t get to hang out with your friends anymore. The mods were moderating. Discord didn't even try to claim otherwise. The group was just huge and things inevitably slipped past the mods now and then. That happens in every platform. It's not the server's fault. Bottom line is Discord has the power to deal with the individual users but they chose to nuke the server instead. What a convenient decision.
  • gruez 6y ago
    1. what counts as a "platform"? 2. if "hate speech" bans must go through the legal system, what about other bans? eg. trolling or other disruptive behavior? 3. going through the legal system takes months/years, how do you prevent actually bad actors from misusing this?
• shiado 6y ago
  This is that scene in all the casino movies where the person who found a system to win gets taken into the office by security and given a stern warning/beatdown.
• dang 6y ago
  For pointers to other active and/or recent vertices of this story graph, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25933543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25933543. As for this thread, it's got 500+ comments. If you want to see them all you'll need to click through the More links at the bottom, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935511&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935511&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935511&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935511&p=3
• alasdair_ 6y ago
  In addition, WSB on Reddit is now private.
• peanut_worm 6y ago
  I don't think there is any good justification for this
• LIRR 6y ago
  They Need there own website!! Social media is controlled by $$$$$$$ and government
• ddevault 6y ago
  This is why I keep ringing the bell of open standards and protocols. This is why I still use IRC in 2021. This is why federation matters. Stop putting your eggs in someone else's corporate basket. Don't be duped by sparkly marketing and polish! You're being had! https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
  • _carbyau_ 6y ago
    I love a good XKCD. :-) I wonder if the fact anyone can join the open source party at any time, means they generally don't. To explain, I posit that people like to have the reassurance of Open Source existing as the minimal floor of quality of experience. And then they go chase "the best experience" knowing that if it all falls over they can go back to the welcoming embrace of Open Source. Who knows, maybe WSB people are busy with a Murmur server right now!
• LIRR 6y ago
  They need there OWN website!!!
• wyxuan 6y ago
  If you've *seen* the moderation (or the lack thereof) you'd understand why it was banned. Place was crazy with all kinds of nasty language. I'll admit I joined early on but I also left early on after seeing how lax the moderation and how much of a toxic mess it was - even more than the sub.
  • sk1one 6y ago
    there are literally nsfw subs full of porn but you cant handle a few words?
    • Clewza313 6y ago
      The Discord was banned. The subreddit was not. (It was briefly private, and is now public again.)
• curiousllama 6y ago
  In all fairness, the reddit got absolutely flooded with new, unwanted, pump-and-dump _crap_ over the past few days... I wouldn't be surprised if this were a reaction less to GME and more to randos loudly announcing the laws they were breaking
• darksinthe 6y ago
  We need an alternative to this server, there was a lot of momentum on AMC and its dwindling because people dont know where to go or whwere to turn, someone needs to make a discord or we need an alternative ASAP
• darksinthe 6y ago
  we neeed an alternative right now for a discord for rallying, this wasnt a coincidence that it got banned, someone got paid off, or many parties got paid off. SOMEONE NEEDS TO FIND OR MAKE AN ALTERNATIVE TO KEEP THIS ALIVE! buy $AMC and hold. Anyone have an alternative?
• disgrunt 6y ago
  This is the class system in the United States becoming abundantly visible to all. Better we all get on the same page about the long con.
• foofoo4u 6y ago
  Is there a resource I can read or a video I can watch that can give an overview of what's going on here? I keep seeing articles about WSB, Gamestop and the market. But I don't quite understand what is going on and why.
  • luxuryballs 6y ago
    TLDR the crumbs noticed some major shorts put in by big hedge fund so they started buying up the stock to drive up the value causing the hedge fund to risk losing multiple billions of dollars on the short, it went viral and here we are. Don’t quote me on this but I think the shorts “activate” on Friday.
  • cesarb 6y ago
    The best resource is Matt Levine's newsletter (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthew-s-levine https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...). The third most recent one (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-25/the-game-never-stops https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-25/the-ga...) is a good starting point.
• Nextgrid 6y ago
  Discord, which is funded fully by "growth and engagement", aka has no real product to sell and has employed enough people & burnt too much money to not be sustainable on a $1/month/user fee (even though this would be enough to sustain the operation at scale), is now trying to appeal to potential future investors and/or their friends or business partners by banning the WSB "server".
• darksinthe 6y ago
  ALTERNATIVE TO WSB DISCORD: https://discord.gg/xupF3gMa https://discord.gg/xupF3gMa
• johncessna 6y ago
  >Discord says it did not ban the server for financial fraud — rather, it was banned because it continued to allow “hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.” Funny how that works. If they're not careful, people might start to think 'Hate Speech' could be misused to pursue an agenda. 'It's not that I disagree with what they are doing, they should have just called each other assholes instead of the X word so now the whole thing has to go'
  • broodbucket 6y ago
    It's an open chat platform. Yes it can be manually moderated, but all it takes is one guy posting something they know is bannable for admins to be within the rules to ban a server. Pretty convenient.
    • johncessna 6y ago
      Maybe that's the next round in the information wars? Each side probing the automated moderating systems of large social media platforms until they find the right sequence that will trigger a shutdown. I'd assume state actors will be able to do this on their own, but for us without state sponsorship, maybe you'll be able to buy it as a service off of the dark web.
      • coolspot 6y ago
        Doesn’t work when the platform is aligned with the community you are trying to bomb. You can write anything in r/politics - the sub won’t be banned, because reddit supports this sub no matter what. You can write anything in a FB BLM group - the group won’t be banned.
      • derefr 6y ago
        Why wouldn't the probes be automated as well? I would expect some party to eventually unleash hatespeech spambots on the Internet, posting ban-worthy comments anywhere they can reach. The flood of those comments would both drown out any manual attempts at hatespeech, while also being so unilateral that it wouldn't really make sense to ban any individual community for having them any more.
• neiman 6y ago
  They banned them for “hateful and discriminatory content” which Discord coincidentally noticed only after r/WallStreetBets became a major financial actor. But there's no connection here, nope. Pure coincidence.
• lemoncookiechip 6y ago
  r/WSB is gathering here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW1GR7BECq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW1GR7BECq4
• hydroii 6y ago
  Wow, this is fucked
• ellyagg 6y ago
  Good to see that the establishment's broad and growing power to censor speech won't be abused. We're in good hands.
• ketamine__ 6y ago
  Did Melvin actually close their positions? Some are claiming they haven't.
  • andrethegiant 6y ago
    Not enough volume for them to have done that, from what I've seen.
  • inawarminister 6y ago
    They never said completely or 100% in CNBC or other press, so WSB are alleging that they only closed some low percentage of their positions, which makes sense mathematically. Closing out ALL the shorts at $300-ish/stock (closing time) would be disastrous to any fund, with the shorts predicated on last months' Gamestop prices of around a single digit. Disclaimer: I do not have a position on Gamestop or any other US stocks.
• newbie578 6y ago
  Getting really sick and tired of these platforms deciding on a whim on who to allow access. Either moderate everyone or no one!
• hydroii 6y ago
  This is so fucked
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• belval 6y ago
  I wonder if we've entered an new part of history with regard to moderation and enforcement of rules online. I disliked Trump, parler and the kind of alt-right shit you could find on Twitter, but by using their right to ban anyone, I think Facebook and Twitter showed that there was no repercussion to censoring/deplatforming users that did not align with their internal values and now we will see those events become much more common as companies become risk averse with regard to the kind of content they host.
• syspec 6y ago
  Looks like people are migrating to https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetbetsnew/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetbetsnew/
  • philliphaydon 6y ago
    Well when places like /r/sino exist I think they are safer on Reddit than anywhere else for now. Reddit seems to be ok with hosting anything.
    • vanattab 6y ago
      Why should r/sino be banned? I have never been there before your post but it looks like a small pro CCP group on reddit?
      • unethical_ban 6y ago
        I think the point is: If a pro-CCP (genocide, suppression of fundamental human rights) subreddit can exist, then perhaps a subreddit that discusses stocks can exist.
      • philliphaydon 6y ago
        For the most part it’s just a sub Reddit of western hating people trying to push propaganda, but if you dig through it and it’s comments there’s some pretty negative stuff that would be removed from Facebook Twitter and YouTube. There was one thread talking about the Uyghurs being criminals and that they should be “killed off like the Jews”. Which is pretty sick IMO. That alone should be reason enough to have that sub Reddit removed.
• HNfriend234 6y ago
  Looks like there is another alternate communities springing up. Found this one: wsbets.win
• rvz 6y ago
  Here come the deplatforming (again). This time /r/wsb is the 'enemy'. Media reports it and causes the paper hands to panic; This is what the large short sellers want. Are they sure that 'deplatforming works' this time? (The have already assembled on /r/wallstreetbetsnew) For the tech platforms, the mainstream media, social media, etc they might as well ban every single person off of the internet at this point. As for GME, just put on your diamond-grade hands for once and hold until Friday's squeeze. EDIT: The sub-reddit is back. http://reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets http://reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets
  • webinvest 6y ago
    The “new” one looked fake and bot-like. Good thing the old one came back.
  • whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    > (The have already assembled on /r/wallstreetbetsnew) Creating a new sub on the same topic as a previously banned sub is against the rules on Reddit. So if their sub is banned for hate speech it doesn't matter how you rephrase it they just ban any similar new subs.
• Jerry2 6y ago
  I hope this invigorates even more people to start their own sites and communities and free themselves from the tyranny of the Silicon Valley oligarchs.
• rmm 6y ago
  Subreddit is back
• robomartin 6y ago
  I said this before [0] and will say it again: The tech community will some day regret wielding this kind of power. It's about loss of trust, which is, perhaps, one of the most delicate things in the universe. Now everyone in the world knows, in no uncertain terms, that your person, business, website, cause, discussion board, advertising capabilities, email, online documents and tools can evaporate and be taken away and shut down, with you and your business destroyed overnight. That's the world we live in today. This, BTW, has nothing whatsoever to do with politics. WSB was not about politics. I thought this GME "event" might result in much-needed introspection and changes in the financial community. If you didn't catch Chamath Palihapitiya's interview on CNBC's "Halftime Report" today you should take the time to watch it. I couldn't find the full interview (easily 20 to 30 minutes long) or I would have posted a link (this is the closest I found [1]). He clearly goes over some of what he thinks might have motivated the GME event. I agree with quite a bit, if not all, of what he said. Part of me hopes that folks now cutoff from WSB will revolt against this and continue on their mission. Full disclosure: I hold non-directional positions on GME. In English, I make money whether it goes up or down...so I don't care which way it goes. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25878457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25878457 [1] https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/01/27/billionaire-investor-chamath-palihapitiya-on-gamestop-surge-and-rise-of-retail-investors.html https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/01/27/billionaire-investor-c... BTW #2: This isn't to say that such things as porn and other online conducts and content might not be in a range between objectionable to net-negative to criminal in different parts of the world. The issue is with platforms placing themselves in the position of being arbitrers of what's purity, values, truth and righteousness. If that's what they want to be they need to be financially and legally responsible for what they do not moderate. We have laws to deal with the criminal elements among us. BTW #3: (sorry for the edits). This is also a case of famous Martin Niemöller poem [2]: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." Everyone was thrilled when they came for Trump and Parler. Now they are coming for someone else. The question is: Who's next and where does it end? https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie...
• xenihn 6y ago
  For anyone who is confused, this will answer all of your questions: https://twitter.com/avalonpenrose/status/1354496683938201600 https://twitter.com/avalonpenrose/status/1354496683938201600
• djvu9 6y ago
  Think of it as the culture revolution of the digital age. If you cheered for Twitter shutting down Trump, or Amazon kicking out Parler, you shouldn't be surprised for this.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  Nice one Discord, you just radicalized 2 million WSB subscribers and everyone else who hears about it. Well done.
  • fennecfoxen 6y ago
    Comments like these really drive home how much a deranged cult phenomenon this whole thing is, more so than any headlines.
    • whatshisface 6y ago
      Well, if you interpret radicalized to mean "have seen a real-world example of the benefits of federated social networks, perhaps real enough to shake the notoriously tech-apathetic public into doing something as easy as making an account somewhere else," then maybe it's a useful insight... unless, of course, nobody does anything.
      • BingoAhoy 6y ago
        Nobody does anything for awhile is the most likely result. But there's also a side effect of generating angst and resentment towards the establishment that'll get bottled up and pressurized waiting for the right opportunity to explosively release. An investment in radicalization so to speak. I think Trump is an example of that phenomenon.
    • cbozeman 6y ago
      By "radicalized" he means, "Will cause them to buy and hold more GameStop to continue the pain until Wall Street learns to back down." Diamond hands all the way. They had the chance to take it on the chin like a man, but they wanted to play rough, so we'll play rough.
      • majormajor 6y ago
        > By "radicalized" he means, "Will cause them to buy and hold more GameStop to continue the pain until Wall Street learns to back down." What's the endgame? Sell at some point? At a profit or a loss? Seems like in that scenario anger would play to the hands of the people who bought earlier and can sell to newcomers...
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• tracyhenry 6y ago
  It seems like the subreddit has gone back up: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6j4r9/where_do_we_go_from_here_and_who_is_going_to_step/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6j4r9/wher...
• Triv888 6y ago
  I think that /r/wsb got 500k new subscribers today, and maybe about 1.5M in the last week. Corporate America is getting scary... I think that their actions could be initiated by the U.S. Government... edit: 1 hour later, ~250k more subscribers... (3,754,326 readers as of 21:05 EST)
• ranman 6y ago
  Are they going to return the server boost $? They're well within their rights to ban it and it was hella toxic in there... but... they should give those people the remaining time or $ on their boosts back. Otherwise that's basically stealing.
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• Grimm1 6y ago
  They're back up at Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6j4r9/where_do_we_go_from_here_and_who_is_going_to_step/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6j4r9/wher...
  • m1ckey 6y ago
    > You know as well as I do that if you gather 250k people in one spot someone is going to say something that makes you look bad. That room was golden and the people that run it are awesome. We blocked all bad words with a bot, which should be enough, but apparently if someone can say a bad word with weird unicode icelandic characters and someone can screenshot it you don't get to hang out with your friends anymore. Discord did us dirty and *I am not impressed with them destroying our community* instead of stepping in with the wrench we may have needed to fix things, especially after we got over 1,000 server boosts. That is pretty unethical. Fair point.
• SirensOfTitan 6y ago
  Remember: Parler tried “making their own X”. They were taken offline by a concerted effort at every level, despite the fact that a large portion of the capitol protests were organized on Facebook and YouTube. Anyone who’s ever been an activist for long enough knows that the censorship that silenced your enemies will eventually silence you. Corporate policing of speech needs to stop.
  • chrissnell 6y ago
    Social media is about to take the same trajectory that MP3s once did. Just as we saw the evolution of Napster and IRC trading, the RIAA takedowns, the rise of BitTorrent, and the eventual emergence of streaming services, I believe we will see a similar trajectory with social media and free speech: 1. Technology enables new social phenomena that subvert the status quo. 2. Corporations move to combat these phenomena <--- we are here now 3. New technology to subvert these controls 4. Industry faces reckoning and embraces the new technology, losing some profit but avoiding a complete loss of control.
    • cbozeman 6y ago
      Its the last part of #4 that we have to prevent. > but avoiding a complete loss of control We need the complete loss of control. Corporations control entirely too much of American, and really, worldwide, life as it is. We can't give this one to them. Its too important. The ability to freely communicate ideas, even in vulgar, poorly considered ways, is too important and too fundamental to humanity to be allowed to be controlled. To quote Picard, "The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!"
      • space_fountain 6y ago
        I was once like you, but. Doesn't it seem to you like something is fundamentally worse about politics now than it was 20 years ago? Isn't it true that people are more disconnected now than they have been in the past 50 years and institutions like clubs and political organizations reduced to merely a place to send money. Obviously the causes of this are varied (for one thing social media is way newer than 20 years), but doesn't it seem likely to you that social media and maybe particularly recommender systems are part of the problem. Society seems like a much more fragile thing than I'd imagined 5 years ago. I'm not ready to throw out all the gatekeepers, they've been part of what kept this boat floating up to now
• cccc4all 6y ago
  This is Censorship with capital C. Anyone that claims that Discord is private company and can do whatever they want, read the room. Discord did this because they were likely afraid of negative government attention, SEC, IRS, FTC, FCC etc. If a private company censors because it thinks that's what the government regulators want them to censor, is it really private company just doing "moderation"?
• rzz3 6y ago
  Next maybe we can just ban Hacker News. I’ve heard some people there _actively promote_ making it harder to censor things on the internet.
• shadowbanned69 6y ago
  New non-discord chat server for WSB https://chatte.rs https://chatte.rs
• fellellor 6y ago
  This is pretty fucked up, even for these guys.
• at_a_remove 6y ago
  I've seen Discord ban any number of subcultures (and then play whack-a-mole with the survivors) based on a lot of hand-waving about "harm" and such. Sometimes I really miss IRC, but people keep abandoning it for Discord.
• dpumpshitlord 6y ago
  For “hatespeech”
• dpumpshitlord 6y ago
  For “hate speech”.. Funny how that hate speech thing works
• dpumpshitlord 6y ago
  For “hate speech”. Funny how that selective hate speech thing works and who it seems to benefit
• Sprbdg 6y ago
  Deliberate sabotage I imagine.
• monadic3 6y ago
  Lmao, government's showing their ass. Discord is just a cuck in the middle.
• CivBase 6y ago
  > Discord says it did not ban the server for financial fraud — rather, it was banned because it continued to allow “hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.” If only Discord - a centralized, online platform - had the power to ban individual users. Too bad. The only reasonable action was to shut down the entire server. That's all they could have possibly done. I'm sure the timing was just coincidental.
• ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  This is what we get with 'it's a private company, it does what it wants" - callous and capriciois behaviour at best, possibly fraud and corruption. Our social media firms have no obligation to the public, no matter how many people rely on them. Consider that 35 Bn are on the line, whichever way the domino falls. Closing a discord in exchange for financial favours later down the line is not even a crime. You could hire people or bots to flood the channels with garbage or porn, and get them banned on purpose.
• salusinarduis 6y ago
  So WSB's Discord guild gets banned for racism right as this entire fiasco is going on, yet the r/conservative Discord guild has had direct racism in it involving hundreds of users and moderator participation and that server is not touched. Makes sense.
• erichocean 6y ago
  How long until Apple and Google ban the Robinhood app?
• johnsmithaddr 6y ago
  https://reddit-wallstreetbets.com/ https://reddit-wallstreetbets.com/ I have put together this new forum/communiy website where we could talk without being censored by reddit or other political interests. I know it is a small efort to create a new account, and start a conversation, but in a very short period of time, we will be free forever. Please share and bring all your friends. Enough is enough, we need to be in control of our lives and ideas. https://reddit-wallstreetbets.com/ https://reddit-wallstreetbets.com/ Please share and bring all your friends tomorrow. We can move out of this and be in control of our lives
• johnsmithaddr 6y ago
  https://reddit-wallstreetbets.com/ https://reddit-wallstreetbets.com/ I have put together this new forum/communiy website where we could talk without being censored by reddit or other political interests. I know it is a small efort to create a new account, and start a conversation, but in a very short period of time, we will be free forever. Please share and bring all your friends. Enough is enough, we need to be in control of our lives and ideas. https://reddit-wallstreetbets.com/ https://reddit-wallstreetbets.com/ Please share and bring all your friends tomorrow. We can move out of this and be in control of our lives
• rubyist5eva 6y ago
  I don't believe their excuse for one second. "Hate speech" is a leftist boogeyman.
• kortilla 6y ago
  It’s laughable that discord does this under the guise of “preventing the spread of misinformation” and stopping the glorification of violence. Presumably they’ll ban anyone playing first person shooters next and any games that aren’t historically accurate? Stupidest fucking catch-all excuse I’ve heard yet. It would save everyone some time if these services just said, “we’ll kick you off if the mood strikes us.”
• 99_00 6y ago
  I'd ban them too. Not worth my company being dumped by their cloud provider or the app being banned because they ruffled the wrong feathers. The parlor lesson has been learned. I won't stick my neck out for principle when it ends up bankrupting my company and having the masses hate me. Not worth it.
• thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
  FWIW the subreddit did not go private. It was temporarily turned off because the load was affecting Reddit as a whole. It lasted less than 30 minutes.
• thereare5lights 6y ago
  u got some nice racism going on here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25936932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25936932
  • dang 6y ago
    Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines? They specifically ask you not to post like this, but rather to email us if there's something that needs our attention: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25936214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25936214.
• Semaphor 6y ago
  For those wondering why the sub went private for a time: > We have grown to the kind of size we only dreamed of in the time it takes to get a bad nights sleep. We've got so many comments and submissions that we can't possibly even read them all, let alone act on them as moderators. We wrote software to do most of the moderation for us but that software isn't allowed to read the Reddit new feed fast enough and submit responses, and the admins haven't given us special access despite asking for it. -- https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6j4r9/where_do_we_go_from_here_and_who_is_going_to_step/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6j4r9/wher...
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  • boruto 6y ago
    Cannot they have two or three bots moderating?
    • SaltySolomon 6y ago
      The issue is really that the entire feed went buggy from all the comments, even the inbuilt too, which they are probably using called AutoModerator has delays of over 10 minutes and more instead of being instant.
    • timendum 6y ago
      Reddit limits API usage mainly for IP, so you need multiple IPs to avoid this issue. It's not impossible to have multiple instance of the same bot running in parallel, but there are too many race condition and it became too much to handle.
      • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
        But then the onus is on Reddit to slacken these restrictions; WSB threads get 100K responses, which is the amount of engagement many social media can only dream of. If Reddit doesn't lift the limits and helps the WSB team out with moderation, they're shooting themselves in the foot because Reddit HAS to act if the WSB team can't moderate effectively. It's why Twitter held off on banning Trump for so long; not so much because of public interest, but because Trump alone kept the platform up, running, active and profitable. Social media loves controversy like that.
• enw 6y ago
  How long will people endure the censorship? Is it just me or am I seeing more subtle revolt against this persistent, opaque censorship on the Internet? I'm trying to stay down-to-Earth, but it honestly seems to be getting out of control with Google, Twitter, et al.
  • Tepix 6y ago
    There are plenty of hard to censor systems out there. You can setup your own Mastodon node or join one with lax rules. The convenience of centralized systems currently trumps the feelings about the moderation of these platforms. If you feel strongly about it you should go ahead, switch to a decentralized platform and get your friends to follow suit.
• Simulacra 6y ago
  I'm really bothered by Discord banning WSB. It's almost petty, like saying that a group of people shouldn't even be allowed to talk to one another because they're too dangerous. It seems like a lot of technology companies are doing all they can to keep people - many stripes of people - from congregating and sharing ideas. I wonder what would happen if these same WSB folks got together in person ... oh..right, they can't. So they can't talk online. Can't gather in person. Can't use social media. It's almost like there's a concerted effort to silence people....
• swayson 6y ago
  The censorship behaviour highlights that BTC appears to be the only remaining asset class without centralised institutional control.
• technick 6y ago
  Discord would claim its “hateful and discriminatory content” for anything in the fucked up reality we are currently living in. For instance, if you call someone retarded and a mod doesn't step in, that is considered hateful. Even though retard is in the dictionary and a widely accepted term by many people. Then saying that only retards buy the shit hedgefunds are peddling would also be considered discriminatory. I'm tired of this fucking bullshit and ready to go thru as many proxy accounts as needed to get my point across. Discord needs to go out of business or grow some balls. Everything in this world could be construed into being hateful or discriminatory if you stretch enough.
  • 6nf 6y ago
    I don't agree with the way you get your point across but I support your right to get your point across this way.
    • ace_of_spades 6y ago
      I don’t really get it. Why do we keep telling people that it is support worthy to engage in name calling? Is it alright to let kids call teachers names at school? “This fucking imbecile wants me to do homework! Fuck that shit!” Maybe that’s ok now since Trump made it acceptable but it certainly wasn’t considered to be appropriate for a long time. It’s not free speech, it’s derogatory speech (for either side of those comparisons). So what changed?
      • Teever 6y ago
        “Take away the right to say ‘fuck’ and you take away the right to say ‘fuck the government.” -- Lenny Bruce I've never really understood the drive to banish profanity or insults. The purpose of language is to communicate ideas and I see no reason why it should be unacceptable for someone to express their disapproval at a situation or individual in the succinct way that profanity provides. If anything profanity is far more mundane than the kinds of words a particularly clever person can string together to convey a heinous idea.
• TeeMassive 6y ago
  * Something the corporate-establishment doesn't like pops up and becomes more popular than their legacy crap * Suddenly a controversy pops up, along the lines of: Fascism, White supremacy, think of the children(tm), x-phobic, surge of hateful posts appear for no reasons * A few days later, right on time, a corporate-establishment media posts a smear article, taking the most offending quotes and content out of context and framing things to point the article is only technically true only. * Payment and services providers bans appear a few days later. Credit cards, crowdfunding and hosting providers all ban the offender in quick succession. This is why all those corporations pushing social justice and cancel culture was a scam from the first day and why Free Speech is so important, because you won't be the one in power deciding.
• josteink 6y ago
  If discord can ban it, then it’s not really a “server” is it? It’s an account on discord’s SaaS platform. If you want a server you actually control, go matrix. Nobody can ban you then.
  • nextlevelwizard 6y ago
    If you want users Discord is the only way to go.
• dmingod666 6y ago
  Anyone who's committed a 'sin' should be banished from the community. Guess now in a few hundred years cycle again and we'll discover the legal system and curtail the power of the new church. History repeats.
  • ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    Religion never really disappears from us, even if we claim to be atheist. What changes is who the “high priests” are, what their revelations reveal, and of course what we worship.
    • dmingod666 6y ago
      Man left on his own will make something resembling religion with it's priests and gods. It's a social coordination mechanism.
• GizmoSwan 6y ago
  reddit has a bad snuffing habit that is only getting worse. The stock related discussions has been actually more overlooked. They are typically tolerated and rarely monitored closely. Reddit is controlled via various cults and they control not just their own subs but also others belonging to other groups.
• perryizgr8 6y ago
  Discord and reddit are private companies, and they have no obligation to let you use their services. They can kick you out for any or no reason, with or without any recourse available to you. If you don't like it go make your own reddit and discord. TLDR: Company does business. Why is this news?
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  This is how we end up with the trolls trying to turn the :ok: symbol into hate speech. ...which reminds me: I need to start a letter writing campaign complaining to Apple about peddling sexual imagery (:aubergine:) to minors.
  • foofoo4u 6y ago
    San Jose State University banned the "ok" symbol last year. Apparently it as the official symbol of the university for decades is now deemed "racist" as a symbol of "white power". We live in an age of utter madness. Literally no sane person thinks that's what it means.
  • IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
    So what...? The swastika used o be an Indian symbol of holiness. Some shitheads started using it, with well-known effects, and that ruined any other possible use. Symbols change, and your pseudo-naive attempts to profess ignorance say more about you than the symbol.
    • gorgoiler 6y ago
      Yes, language evolves and it does so by majority rule, over time. That’s not the case with :ok: though. I sure don’t get out much, but I see no widespread use in the real world. What’s actually happening is that, with respect, one or more of the following vocal minorities is pushing for a change-in-meaning: - white supremacists - hoaxers / trolls - virtue signallers
• randmeerkat 6y ago
  This is exactly why I think we’re in late stage capitalism. The economy has become so toxic that an army of retail investors has to yolo their money to try to realize an economic advantage in their lives. When retail investors finally do find a crack in the economic system and make some money, the regulatory body that never cared about the banks and their fraud in 2008, and the corporate enterprises that didn’t broadcast occupy Wall Street, all turn around and try to stop the momentum of WSB. The hypocrisy of it all is unbelievable.
  • cheph 6y ago
    > The economy has become so toxic that an army of retail investors has to yolo their money to try to realize an economic advantage in their lives. "has to"? really? I mean, that is quite the extreme claim. I hope you have some evidence for me that there was no way that these could get any economic advantage in their lives without basically pissing their money away pumping a stock up way above any value that makes sense in a game of hot potato where someone is going to lose out because the price just makes no sense. I will be waiting. I mean some might say having the money to pull this in the first place is some manner of economic advantage. But I guess not the kind of people who think they are entitled to be wealthy in a reality where being destitute and improvised is the normal state in nature if you have more than 7 billion people, and anything else took thousands of years of human development.
• wintorez 6y ago
  It's time we get back to basics: irc
• protoman3000 6y ago
  Why exactly is it so difficult for some to stop using derogatory, ableist, racist, sexist, antisemitic and otherwise bigot language other than that they want to be exactly that? We know the power of habits and we know that if you’re a user of the word “retard” in a derogatory sense, your very first thoughts when seeing an actual mentally challenged person won’t be positive. If you’re not a bigot then stop using bigot language. It’s so easy there is no excuse.
• mberning 6y ago
  Oh my god I hate censorship now. But in all seriousness, if they are breaking the law they should be charged. If not then let these institutional investors clean up their own mess.
• vbezhenar 6y ago
  I hope that those bans will reveal to more people, that Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and, now, Discord are rotten platforms. Hopefully that will create enough demand to let truly free competitors rise up.
  • sgift 6y ago
    Truly "free" competitors financed by VC that will certainly not lean on them the moment one of their financial buddies starts loosing money to people talking on their "free" platforms? I don't see it. And in the current market I don't see where else the money should come from.
• gadders 6y ago
  Looks like we have one group of billionaires defending another, as per usual.
• NotPavlovsDog 6y ago
  This is really exciting, feels like open standards, independent internet is going to continue getting extreme motivation to expand and establish, with private "freedom of speech" censorship by for-profit platforms. We're going to see more fragmentation, and growth of closed platforms perceived by users as "slightly less evil" such as telegram vs watsapp. This may also motivate the return to truly open internet ideals of the past.
  • zpeti 6y ago
    I'm slightly sceptical, because with open standards you still need to do moderation somehow. The WSB are complaining that Reddit didn't give them the mod tools they need. I believe we're going to see fragmentation in platforms rather than open standards. And I say that because we've just launched our own reddit alternative, Retalk.com. It's also moderated, but by different standards.
    • NotPavlovsDog 6y ago
      There is nothing preventing an open standard moderation tag that each user selects how to treat. With such moderation tagging in place, for example, if I wanted to use Reddit but mistrust moderators, with an open treatment of data, I would be able to select to ignore their rating/per entry and use ratings by a group of users I select. (impossible to imagine Reddit doing something like this) However, it requires I have access to core data. Today, the superusers or platform admins can prevent "controversial" entries from even being visible on the platform/subplatform/subreddit.
      • ggggtez 6y ago
        This seems to misunderstand the purpose of moderation entirely. Moderation serves many purposes, but only one of them is to save your delicate eyes from seeing things you don't want to see. Perhaps the more important one are things like: ensuring that your social media service doesn't have a bad reputation so that people other than disaffected white guys will actually want to use it. If your site is overrun with porn, then sure, each user could just block those millions of posters with your open standard... but every new user still sees it, and decides "this service isn't built for me" and never comes back. At the core of community moderation is community. If the community looks like it's full of people doing gray-illegal things, then normal people (and advertisers) will generally shy away... and lawsuits will not be far behind.
• nickthemagicman 6y ago
  The puritans among us have been trying to keep the language clean for centuries. Wasn't Huckleberry Finn banned at one point. Librarians have been fighting the same battle as well. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks... There's a reason Signal got 40 million people in a week. Seems like free speech platforms all the way down to the infrastructure level would be great investments to build right now.
• faebi 6y ago
  I argue it was another issue. The community got too big for discord to handle as of now. My iPad app got completely unresponsive and I could not use discord anymore at all. I assume similar situations depending on the clients.
• LockAndLol 6y ago
  They can host their own matrix server... It's not that hard. Then they won't have to whine about deplatforming. When will they learn? Companies aren't your friends: the bottom line is. If they wanted to have an anonymous server, they could host it on I2P and provide instructions on how to connect.
• lostlogin 6y ago
  This thread might have the most downvoted comments I have ever seen here. It’s massively polarising. Discord, Reddit and freedom of speech - a potent brew.
• cik 6y ago
  There is some brilliant analysis on WSB, some rubbish - the usual. But there was great analysis on this post a few hours ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6n4ay/the_biggest_risk_we_face_and_why_its_nothing_to/ https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6n4ay/the_... Assuming it (like others) gets taken down, here's a copy+paste with some cleanup: <snip> Note that Discord has had significant investment from private equity funds including FirstMark Capital, Greenoaks Capital Partners, Index Ventures, IVP, Greylock Partners, Benchmark, Accel, General Catalyst, Ridge Ventures, Spark Capital, and Tencent Holdings. At least one of these firms has invested with Point72 Ventures, which recently helped Melvin Capital. So it's not too surprising that strings were pulled to get the Discord channel banned for "hate speech" (which is a very useful brush to tar anyone with, as anyone who challenges it can easily be dismissed as a nazi). <snip> Reddit is owned by Advance Publications, which is owned by Donald Newhouse and the Newhouse family (some details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Newhouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Newhouse). Fortunately, Newhouse's family office (think a private hedge fund dedicated to investing just the family's money) is pretty far removed from the hedge fund world afaik. The family office's CIO (details here: https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1g6j2tztzpb3t/A-New-CIO-for-One-of-America-s-Richest-Families https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1g6j2tztzpb3t...) got her career started in the investment bank world and did not work for hedge funds, at least according to her Linkedin profile. So the Donaldson family has limited motive to stick their necks out and force a ban of this subreddit. <snip>
  • twic 6y ago
    Is this great analysis, or is this random paranoia?
    • PartiallyTyped 6y ago
      Is there a correlation between en masse smear campaigns, bot attacks against retail, and the uber rich losing money?
    • toopok4k3 6y ago
      We are talking about billions of losses. Someone somewhere is trying to minimize them as their full time jobs.
• AntiImperialist 6y ago
  The main reason certain political voices are targeted over others is that the technological innovation is centralized into certain cities. City folks usually have certain political leaning which is not representative of people living elsewhere. For this reason, I hope the corona thing will make decentralized development more popular. If people working for the web platforms are all based in different villages and work remotely, they don't have to confirm to retarded city politics and can run their thing completely differently. If there is a platform that allows for republican opinions, another one that allows for libertarian opinions, another one that allows for libertarian ones, it will be completely fine.
• jug 6y ago
  It does feel like a watershed moment regarding hedge funds. This is the first time netizens capitalize on hedge fund short favorites and it has been surprisingly easy to cause an absolute catastrophy in the order of billion losses for them. I heard Melvin Capital may even have gone bankrupt? And how to do it? You get people to invest in a stock that is expected by the industry to go belly up. Seriously. It's that easy. It's not illegal. It's so easy that even semiprofessionals can understand exactly which stock are hedge fund favorites. It's not hard information to come by. And, here's the kicker: There is a potential monetary reward if you enter and exit a stock at the right moment. So it's simple to discover and execute, and there is a financial incentive, and it's not against the law. This is a trifecta of properties that makes this very interesting to follow indeed. I just saw this article too: As hedge funds try to cover losses, the rings are now spreading over the market: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-26/hedge-funds-fighting-short-raids-now-getting-hit-on-bullish-bets https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-26/hedge-fun... The author speculates that this might even ultimately trigger a market correction.
  • andromeduck 6y ago
    I'd argue that the last year or so of Tesla was the first major incarnation of this gamma squeeze + memes to burn short sellers but yeah GME is a while other level.
    • ppod 6y ago
      There is kind of a continuum between cases that are pure squeeze 'n memes and ones that are more based on non-linear long term value propositions. Three years ago, I think you could make a case for Tesla that it was either going to go bankrupt or grow many times over, but not stay in between. It may even be that bankruptcy was the more likely outcome. But if you gather enough support in the belief that a successful outcome is possible, then it can become self-fulfilling, especially if capital is one of the main obstacles. The company can use capital raised from the boom in the share price to lower debt and invest. In the extreme case this could be true of almost any company. Imagine if GME were just a shell and a brand. Then they raise money, get a great board, hire industry experts, and go... whatever.. compete with Steam, turn the physical stores into e-sports venues, pivot to game development, whatever. Use the money to get the expertise, and you already have the brand and attention, which is now worth a lot more. That is kind of what happened with Tesla to some extent, although they already had a great brand a genius owner.
• Tycho 6y ago
  I think the problem here is pretty obvious: we have laws and norms about hate speech, but why do we have nothing to prevent hate reading?. Why do we allow people to seek out and absorb hateful ideas and opinions? It's the intellectual equivalent of financing terrorism and the people engaging it are escaping justice. It's a huge blindspot for society. Who knows how much harm is caused by this 'dark thought' in every day life, as the rest of us unwittingly engage with these individuals, assuming they are not motivated by any sort of forbidden information.
  • gizmondo 6y ago
    Can't say if it's sarcasm or not. Straight from Fahrenheit 451?
• majortennis 6y ago
  Theres quite a few crypto pump and dump groups they should remove IMO , they're all scams
• deleted 6y ago
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• bane 6y ago
  I'm really curious in how much money was needed to pump the price the stock up this much. If it's relatively little, it really points to a flaw in the stock market system.
• deleted 6y ago
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• ibraheemdev 6y ago
  UPDATE - The server is now back up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25948101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25948101
• 99_00 6y ago
  The precedent was set with proTrump groups and people. Any group or person who attracts negative attention must go. Not worth the business risk. Politicians are eager to make even apolitical issues partisan. The outrage driven media is happy to launder and legitimize retoric into fake news. Internet mobs are quick to follow. Standing for principle will hurt your business and ruin your name. Not worth it. I would do the same thing.