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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

• 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...
    • hagy 6y ago
      It's after hours trading, which is very low volume and generally not available to most retail investors. Probably just another hedge fund getting in their shorts at these high prices. The FUD spread due to the plunge in after hours is just a bonus for their new short position. Further, I think everyone is drastically over estimating the impact of r/wsb and retail investors in general on the GME action. This is hedge fund vs. hedge fund in an opportunity for unusually outsized gains on both the long and short positions over relatively short time frames. Good for them to keep the narrative focused on retail investors rather than capitalist titans in a financial blood bath.
      • xiphias2 6y ago
        The amount of leverage even small money can make using out of money call options cannot be understated either. Sure, hedge funds have to offer those options and cover with longs, but what people did looks more like buying a lottery ticket with a great expected return.
    • astauf5 6y ago
      One's opinion is driven by everyone else's sentiment. Seeing literally everyone post "HOLD THE LINE" and "BUY THE DIP" and "TO THE MOON" will make you do the same. If you don't see this, then you don't know if these people are still your allies.
• asddubs 6y ago
  probably just an excuse and the real reason is that they want to stay out of trouble. (to state the obvious)
  • TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Aren't they opening themselves up to a world of hurt by this ban? I admit I don't understand securities law, but surely interfering with an ongoing stock bonanza like this should raise some authorities' eyebrows, particularly if it turns out someone from Discord side had a stake in the whole thing? I mean, surely they realized that this decision will directly impact the stock price.
    • QuesnayJr 6y ago
      If anything the risk goes the other way. If the SEC construes the Discord as being responsible for a pump-and-dump scheme, then it's facing legal attention. Even if it's not a pump-and-dump scheme, there are going to be comments there that can potentially be made to look like one to a judge.
• SubiculumCode 6y ago
  Discord, a monopoly?
  • ve55 6y ago
    When you're able to play a video game and have a large amount of users agree to use anything besides Discord, then I'll grant this objection. Until then, I'll refer to it as a monopoly (not over all communication of course, just within its own niche).
    • root_axis 6y ago
      All the voice chat options that existed in the gaming world prior to Discord's dominance still exist, except with those options you have to pay for your own hosting like every gaming clan used to do prior to Discord. This is the cost of "free". It doesn't help that Discord has the best chat client on the market, so the competitors need to step it up.
      • ve55 6y ago
        It's a good point worth making: that Discord only exists and is as usable and popular as it is because it has a profit model and significant funding, and that's definitely a large component of why FOSS has lost users to them. Still, as long as things like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive and Signal and perhaps even Firefox exist, I'll believe we can do better.
    • SilasX 6y ago
      Not a big gamer, but I’ve done voicechat in games over jitsi and Zoom.
    • karpierz 6y ago
      Anything is a monopoly if you define the niche narrowly enough.
      • ve55 6y ago
        I agree, and I tried not to be too narrow in my reasoning, but it's primarily speaking from what myself and so many that I know have experienced. I initially didn't want to use it, and I know many others that didn't. Slowly the communities they loved moved to it until they were completely excluded and felt forced to adopt it as well. At this point I only have two friends left that still refuse to use it, everyone else gave in citing network effects. It reminds me precisely of how Facebook felt when I was in school, in that you were excluded from friend groups and events if you chose not to use it. I know there are many alternatives, but getting your favorite communities to switch to them is completely intractable. Communication shouldn't be like this and I think that we can do much better, even if it takes us awhile to get there.
• mrtksn 6y ago
  See, the problem is that people are doing all this because they believe that it doesn’t matter. These are not idealists or indoctrinated revolutionaries. No one is going to do anything if it’s not going to bring lulz or cash quickly because nothing matters anyway. All the anti establishment movement is nihilistic in its core. These are not Eastern European kids who dream to finish school and go to Western Europe and do something with their lives, these are also not Chinese who dream to go to America for a new life. They are not the American youth from the 60s or the bolsheviks from the pre-soviet era. On the other hand, some of them must be rich now. Who knows what easily won money could bring.
  • disgrunt 6y ago
    You are certainly right for many participating in this short squeeze. But collectively this short squeeze is undeniable proof that what's good for the goose is not good for the gander. The hedge funds play by a separate set of rules from the rest of us.
    • mrtksn 6y ago
      That’s why they believe that it doesn’t matter in first place. I’m not a nihilist but I think they have a point. As a Long time lurker of the sub, I’m not happy with reddit closing it down.
      • afuchs 6y ago
        This thread/discussion is attached to an article about Discord banning one (of multiple, only one got banned) communities and the r/wallstreebtets community going private (moderators limiting access to members who've already joined and blocking outsiders). Since then, the subreddit was opened back up. How did Reddit close it down if it everyone can still access it?
        • mrtksn 6y ago
          Yep, the sub is back therefore I am no longer unhappy :)
• nhumrich 6y ago
  Looking at this from another point of view, no other option but today. There is probably more users violating the terms today (hate speech) then ever before. If they were already watching, then there is a threshold. Today would be the day the threshold is hit. Today is probably the tipping point of no return, moderation becomes virtually impossible.
• hintymad 6y ago
  Some posts below said that banning for hate speech was really a charade. But if that's true, what's wrong with retail investors pooling their resources to squeeze short? How is it different from a hedge fund pooling resources to flex their muscle of financial engineering?
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    There wouldn't be anything wrong with that. There'd be a lot right with it, honestly - I would be trumpeting it as a clear victory of the little guy over snobby funds who don't think anyone else can understand finance. But what's happening right now is almost certainly a pump and dump with a short squeeze as a facade. I've seen a lot of commenters who seem to be grievously misled about the actual mechanics of a short squeeze, and think that short sellers will be forced to buy all their stock at market price on Friday.
    • oehpr 6y ago
      I haven't heard anything to suggest that the short sellers are forced to buy back the stock either. This is a stock has clearly caught public's attention, Once the hype cycle is over, why wouldn't it regress to the mean? Who's going to believe that the stock stays at this level over the long term? Fun to talk about though. This is a very entertaining story.
      • fallingknife 6y ago
        If a short position goes hard against you the brokerage will make you to put up more collateral (money) and if you can't, then your only other option is to buy back some of your position, so yeah, short sellers can be forced to buy back stock.
        • devilduck 6y ago
          That point is kind of the whole point too
      • 6y ago
• underseacables 6y ago
  “ 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” I agree with you, but I lament that outside of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit, it’s been very hard for any social media company to gain traction.
  • jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    It doesn't help that one of the most recent ones to try was deplatformed as it was gaining many new users.
    • Sunspark 6y ago
      No, it's because they became a legal risk as they were the primary host of insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol while chanting "Hang Mike Pence!". Also, private business can do whatever they want. 1st amendment only applies to government not private business.
      • zionic 6y ago
        Please stop spreading misinformation, the capital riot was primarily organized on Facebook.
        • aardvarkr 6y ago
          He said “primary host of insurrectionists” and said nothing about planning. You’re just looking to fight about some terrible app that was ran by a wannabe mark zuckerberg that prided himself on letting extremists run rampant. Zero moderation meant anyone who wanted to say “hang mike pence” could do it all day long without any fear of repurcusion. That’s a clearly violent threat. That’s the chant of a anarchist mob.
      • testesttest 6y ago
        Private business can't do whatever they want when their behavior is regulated/encouraged by congress. See https://www.wsj.com/articles/save-the-constitution-from-big-tech-11610387105 https://www.wsj.com/articles/save-the-constitution-from-big-...
• Itsdijital 6y ago
  WSB goes private all the time. They do it to "cool the jets" so to speak. They will likely be doing it a lot more in the coming days.
  • asenna 6y ago
    The parent comment is not talking about WSB going private (which you're right, it does happen from time to time by the mods for housekeeping). But they're actually talking about Discord shutting down WSB servers - for those unfamiliar, WSB subreddit also had an official discord server which was quite active.
    • Kiro 6y ago
      They are talking about both. Read the post again.
• tootie 6y ago
  None of the day traders on WSB are doing after hours trading.
• jonathankoren 6y ago
  > 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). What? I have never used Discord. If you think that a company has a monopoly on your social life, that's on you. There are lots of chat services There's even gasp email, and double gasp group texts. The problem here isn't that we need a new decentralized system, the problem is that people are too lazy to use the decentralization we have today.
  • throwaway3699 6y ago
    Email is not comparable to Discord... Teamspeak and Mumble are dying because everyone moved to Discord -- and all the professional meeting solutions are awful. What should I use if it's so easy?
    • jonathankoren 6y ago
      TFW you complain about a player being dominate, and then immediately refuse to use any smaller rival because they aren’t dominate. WTF? Get over yourself.
      • throwaway3699 6y ago
        I don't choose which platforms communities and friends move to. I have limited agency in this situation and exercising that is pointless due to network effects. I'm not annoyed about dominance, I'm annoyed about monopoly abuse.
        • jonathankoren 6y ago
          Well that’s the crux isn’t it? You want to complain, but declare yourself helpless in the face of multiple options. You’re the problem here.
• joubert 6y ago
  > that a single company has a monopoly on their online social life Isn’t that what people are also basically saying of Twitter. And Facebook. And ...?
  • kaslai 6y ago
    Yes, though that's kind of irrelevant. What use is Facebook to me if all my friends are only on Discord? These companies aren't the only source of socialization for everyone, but for a lot of people they effectively are.
  • JAlexoid 6y ago
    Twitter is a news feed, not a social network. Facebook is the dangerous one.
• tylerjwilk00 6y ago
  Don't kid yourself. It was intentional. We should all be getting really worried about these platforms. You feel that cold breeze? The future is coming and it's chilly.
  • sjg007 6y ago
    There's a solution here. In the past it was fidonet, today it might be the fediverse.
  • CyberRabbi 6y ago
    I have a different view. This will create a need for better decentralization tech. That’s a warm future to me.
    • ziftface 6y ago
      I think you're right and I think it's strange that we focus so much on crypto and other high-tech solutions to problems we don't have, but not on federated distributed versions of social media, messaging, video hosting. I guess it's not as new and shiny. I've been using matrix for the past year or so and I can tell you it's been great. I'm surprised at how stable and easy it is. I text friends who are on different servers, and no one notices. The clients are all starting to get E2EE by default. Hopefully the future is as warm.
• deevolution 6y ago
  It's been reported the mods temporarily killed the subreddit; it was part of the plan.
• dheera 6y ago
  r/wallstreetbets is back online as of now. The Discord spaces on the other hand have split up into a bunch of other broken spaces.
• lumost 6y ago
  I wonder if covid has made people view online communities as the public space. In prior years treating an online community as your sole social outlet wouldn't be viewed as healthy. Now it's almost the defacto.
  • ryanSrich 6y ago
    I remember the days when you could say some truly deplorable shit online and almost no one would care. People who didn’t want to hear it would ignore or block and move on. Now it seems like so many topics and words are completely off limits. It’s very restrictive and I think it’s making the web a less free, a less open, and a less fun space. It’s extremely hard to exist online when you have not only a raging group of pro censorship PC police hell bent on removing you, but coordinated networks of platforms that will remove you in unison. So I think it’s less that people see online communities as their public squares, and more that it’s very difficult to exist online if don’t hold the same ideas and opinions of those controlling the platforms.
    • Splatter 6y ago
      This is why I think it's so important that the internet begins moving towards decentralization soon. Much of the censorship and top-down control we're witnessing today will only get worse while there's no bittorrent-like or blockchain-like decentralization.
      • jsilence 6y ago
        Ok, but lets not forget how a few actors can spoil a healthy community. Remember Kuro5hin? Very healthy and thriving community destroyed by a handful of stupid trolls. Have been following one of the decentralized web approaches, don't remember, netsomething dot net, runs in the browser, very nice interface. Started promising until it got swamped with right wing lunatics doing nothing but trolling and spewing antisemitic stuff all over the place. I am not even offended, it is just a waste of my time to wade thru this trash to find some meaningful conversation. Any unmoderated community is going to attract these lunatics. The only places where I find meaningful conversation are topic centered Forums. Anything sans topic turns into a burning dumpster when unmoderated. This is humanity. The lunies get their voices amplified and the sane fall silent.
• fulafel 6y ago
  I agree decentralized platforms need more push, but we also need better advertising than WSB type of case, so we get nice communities on them.
• anonytrary 6y ago
  > 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 Hmm, it's almost as if this just happened recently, but people looked the other away because it was tightly coupled to politics. I think 2021 is going to blow 2020 out of the water.
  • rorykoehler 6y ago
    I don't think as many people looked the other way as you suspect. I was happy about the first instance for the same reason I'm happy about this instance. I want to see them all burn to the ground so we can go back to the principles of the web pre web2.0 but building it back better and more resilient to being hijacked by corporate money.
• Kiro 6y ago
  The timing is due to the insane influx of new users causing the server mods to completely lose control and trolls wreck havoc. The subreddit did not go private due to the ban. You're reading too much into the headline. It depicts two separate events that are both caused by too many new users (too many new posts in the subreddit's case).
• marvin 6y ago
  The Discord ban was clearly because the community itself is controversial from a legal point of view. That's why the ban happened today. But I think this is an unwise move. Each community that is censored over something legal but controversial, pushes the creative citizens of the Internet towards building more open platforms. Hope we end up there soon, this constant censorship of communities I might want to have a look at to satisfy my curiosity gets mighty tiring.
  • teekert 6y ago
    And shorting more stock than a total company even has is not controversial? Or using massive shorting to just keep on pushing a stock down? It feels a lot more controversial to me and yet, the hedge fund managers dont't really feel anything. Well apart from the fact that they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and now they have to pay. But I wonder if their platforms are now being censored. Classic money is power, I'm firmly on the side of WSB here.
    • marvin 6y ago
      I agree with you. But there's definitely a controversy here, in the sense that two large groups have strongly differing opinions. To my eyes, that controversy is part of a very public power struggle. I firmly believe that the WSB community is in the right, and that any legal gray areas are subtle enough that it would require a judge to decide. So there is no reason for internet companies to pre-emptively wash their hands of the situation. But yet here we are.
  • IgorPartola 6y ago
    How exactly is WSB controversial from a legal point of view?
    • user-the-name 6y ago
      Stock market manipulation.
      • 6y ago