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This sort of stuff will put people more and more on edge, there is the deplatforming going on, people asserted their power financially, and now getting that rem
by speeder 6y ago
This sort of stuff will put people more and more on edge, there is the deplatforming going on, people asserted their power financially, and now getting that removed too, the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence?
Even more with some irresponsible newspapers blaming the whole thing on GamerGate and Alt-Right, effectively pushing away people that previously could be on their side.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoPerhaps but Americans won't result to violence en mass. Despite what you may have seen, Americans are rather docile. A small minority of folks who just so happened to be of military age during the country's longest war but never signed up to fight are the same people who buy the most guns and saber rattle about civil war, etc...
- metalliqaz 6y agoOh please. Robinhood's business model is not designed for this kind of thing. They are not required to tank their own business to allow malcontents to feel better about themselves.
- TheHypnotist 6y agoHow does allowing trades tank their business? That is their business.
- metalliqaz 6y agoThousands of new accounts buying one stock for free (while it's at the top) and then disappearing after it tanks is not going to help them. Is this not obvious?
- alex_c 6y agoThen block new accounts for a day or two until this blows over, not specific stocks. Why would anyone use a trading platform that now has a history of picking and choosing what trades you are allowed to make?
- TheHypnotist 6y agoYeah i'm sure they hate the traffic and the increased user base. Get real.
- koolba 6y agoThat shouldn’t change anything if they require the stocks to be purchased with cash and not margin. Brokerages can, and do all the time, set specific margin requirements for volatile securities. There’s no reason they can’t do that here as well. (unless they literally can’t because their tech stack doesn’t support it which would be pretty funny)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zwily 6y agoRobinhood doesn’t let you choose your free stock, they give you one randomly.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ericmay 6y agoI always thought the app was good - but my view of the role of the broker is to place my trades. If the SEC wants to shut down trading of a security they should do so. This will be very disruptive to Robinhood. I think today they made a poor business decision that will affect their valuation and potentially the company itself. I don't do much trading on Robinhood, mostly for learning or experimenting with small amounts of money but this move has left a sour taste. I'll be closing my account, while recognizing that other brokerages are doing the same (though not all). edit Retail investors are locked out, $GME is still going up. What's the fucking excuse now?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vincentmarle 6y ago> Oh please. Robinhood's business model is not designed for this kind of thing. They are not required to tank their own business to allow malcontents to feel better about themselves. Well, they're gonna lose millions of customers over this I predict. How is that not killing their business?
- ceilingcorner 6y agoIt’s a pretty classic tactic in the history of conflict. By pushing your opponent into a tight position, you force him to strike first, thus giving you complete justification in your disproportionate response.
- agumonkey 6y agoIt seems preprogrammed in the brain. I can witness that in people that will gradually boil you until you snap and then benefit from the chaos as revenge almost sub-conscientiously
- agilob 6y agoIt's a police tactic called Kettling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettling
- sircastor 6y agoI’m kind of embarrassed to say it never occurred to me that the goal of kettling was to encourage a non-violent protest to violence. Thinking on it, it makes a sort of sick sense. If the people are actually violent the rules go out the window and you can use whatever force you deem necessary. And the police always consider themselves the superior group.
- WJW 6y agoThe link to the Wikipedia article explicitly mentions that is was originally designed to just coop up a crowd for several hours so that they get bored and the situation de-escalates. This was seen as a more effective and humane tactic than dispersing rioting crowds using fear by doing police charges. That said, 1990s era European protests (when the theory behind kettling was developed) were rather less violent than current day American protests, helped in no small part of course by the relative prevalence of firearms in American society and their higher distrust of police forces (again, compared to Europeans. Atm distrust between police and protesters in the USA seems to be in a vicious downward spiral where the actions of both group confirm the prejudices of the other group)
- dd36 6y agoPump and dump isn’t legal.
- nip180 6y agoSqueezing a short is different then a pump and dump.
- jermaustin1 6y agoWhen it succeeds, and the originators of the squeeze don't sell beforehand.
- vetinari 6y agoAs it was said in previous days: they (the originators of the squeeze) can remain irrational longer, than the other side (hedge fund managers) can remain solvent.
- jermaustin1 6y agoTrue, but if they sell a massive position and the stock tanks, and a bunch of little guys are left to hold the bag, I could see the SEC definitely investigating it as a pump and dump.
- monadic3 6y agoMight as well try to hold water in a sieve. What are they gonna do, charge tens of thousands of people?
- vetinari 6y agoIf the bunch of the little guys invested each just few hundred, it is not that a big loss. So if they end up holding the bag, it will be distributed among big crowd, where each member would be missing just a little. Of course, if someone went above that and invested an amount, where losing it would hurt, that's different.
- baybal2 6y agoI've heard the talk that Robinhood website is an op by a financial fund called Citadel LLC. It may be considered market manipulation on their side well more solidly than some speculation on the internet, not to say a breach of brokerage contractual obligations.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- batmenace 6y agoNot quite. Citadel is a very well known quant hedge fund. The main way Robinhood makes money (and can let people trade without commission) is by selling their customers order flow (legally) to Citadel. Citadel (legally) uses this customer information to, in the milliseconds before the customer, front-run the trade, buy the shares and sell them to the Robinhood users at a marginal profit.
- axlee 6y agoThat doesn't sound correct: https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/how-robinhood-makes-money/ https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/how-robinhood-m... - Rebates from market makers and trading venues - Robinhood Gold - Stock loan - Income generated from cash - Cash Management
- tylerhou 6y agoPayment for order flow falls under "rebates from market makers and trading venues." https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/stock-order-routing/ https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/stock-order-rou...
- jrochkind1 6y agoHow much do you think Citadel has made off of GME in the last week?
- jcfrei 6y ago
- TheRealDunkirk 6y ago> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? What's even more concerning to me is that, to platforms looking for an excuse, your comment could be painted as trying to "incite" violence, and used as a justification to ban you.
- koheripbal 6y agoThe WSB sub is almost certainly going to get banned by Reddit. Given the track record Reddit has of keeling over to public pressure, there is no way they are going to stand up to the SEC.
- mlinhares 6y agoThere's no public pressure to do that, the only pressure is from Wall Street itself. The public is cheering the whole thing.
- whoknew1122 6y agoHow do we know what 'the public' is cheering? Has there been any reputable sources of this? On one hand, the rise of meme stocks is shining light that one of the central conceits of capitalism is wrong (i.e. that the stock market isn't a good arbiter of the value of companies). But as a member of the public, I'm concerned about what happens when the meme stocks come crashing back to earth. When that happens institutional investors will overreact, doom and gloom will reign, and CEOs of public companies will use that to lay off people and cut worker benefits. The common person always loses when bubbles burst.
- realce 6y agoIf there was no meme-stockery happening, Gamestop would have gone bust and everyone that works there would have been laid off. That's what the whole short strategy was intended to do, bleed them dry just like Toys R Us. In a crazy way this is probably saving a lot more jobs than it's jeopardizing.
- boredumb 6y ago"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
- mFixman 6y ago> some irresponsible newspapers blaming the whole thing on GamerGate and Alt-Right [...] What?
- pfortuny 6y agoThe ft dropped the “Alt-Right” bomb in an article and then they had to change it.
- paganel 6y agoAnd strangely enough there's no mention right now of what Robin Hood is doing on their front page.
- albedoa 6y agoOP might have a few hangups: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=speeder%20gamergate&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- greatpatton 6y agoyes Financial Times! this is a real low for a journalist...
- sudosysgen 6y agoTo be entirely fair to the FT, WSB did originally have some connection to 4chan's /biz/. It doesn't really anymore, but it's an understandable mistake imo
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoNo one is going to become violent over not being able to buy GameStop or Nokia stock.
- cik 6y agoAh, but what about being able to sell?
- serf 6y agoIt's not that those stocks hold specific value, it's that the denial of trade demonstrates to people a lack of personal power and freedom with regards to their own finances and where they may be directed. it signifies a small loss of financial liberty and flexibility on behalf of the citizenry, which is enough to spark upset. meanwhile large groups are allowed to systematically abuse in-place systems in a semi-visible public fashion without backlash or repercussion from regulators in most cases, exacerbating the perceived difference between 'Us and Them', fueling outrage and divide even further. It's easy to consider why this might upset people.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoOnce again, no one is going to become violent over this. People aren't losing jobs, they aren't losing housing, they aren't losing food, they aren't being disappeared by balaclava'ed men in the middle of the night.
- paganel 6y agoIf further decreases the legitimacy of the regime currently in place, I'm not talking Democrats vs. Republicans or anything like that, I'm talking about the military-industrial complex which has got a strong financial wing added to it starting with the mid '80s. Once that legitimacy is gone then all bets are off.
- fullshark 6y agoMessing with people's finances is more anger inducing imo than banning people from an internet message board.
- bko 6y ago> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? Do you honestly believe this? Somehow we'll go from not being able to buy certain stocks to violence? Banning collecting rain water on your own property didn't do it. Abject failure of politicians keeping drinking water clean didn't do it? Not being able to buy cheese from unpasteurized milk didn't do it. Can't grow a plant in your own backyard for personal consumption. But this is it, this is the impetuous. Not being able to buy GME stock. Let's be real. This is small potatoes.
- the8472 6y agostraw, when the camel broke.
- psychlops 6y agoIt's true that today's population is complacent. Many should take another look at how flimsy the reasons were why Americans fought a war of independence.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoI’ve always thought that if the Revolution happened today, you’d have big media corporations like The NY Times writing hit pieces on George Washington everyday.
- Macha 6y agoYou say this like it wasn't the case that media outlets wrote anti-revolution articles then: https://allthingsliberty.com/2014/03/james-rivington-kings-printer-patriot-spy/ https://allthingsliberty.com/2014/03/james-rivington-kings-p...
- dogma1138 6y agoThe American Revolution used the social media of the time, what do you think the federalist papers were all about? A lot of the established press was against it and they did constantly published “hit pieces”. History is written by the victors if the American Revolution didn’t succeed the US would likely eventually gained independence but it would’ve been a commonwealth nation. The Revolution isn’t the reason why you have freedom today, Canada is free so is the UK. The world would look quite different than it is today but not as different as you might think.
- thaumaturgy 6y ago> ...the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? I wonder how big the intersection is between people saying this now and people who said that the Black Lives Matter protests were violent (when they largely weren't). > there is the deplatforming going on, people asserted their power financially, and now getting that removed too It's not the same people. I keep seeing efforts to compare the deplatforming of violent and radical white supremacists that were using platforms to coordinate a coup to whatever other unpopular thing is happening today. I suspect that's an attempt to cultivate a little sympathy for people who have none for others. Yes, large investment firms appear to be circling their wagons now and making moves through media partners and others to try to stop the bleeding. That's an entertaining enough event all on its own, it doesn't need specious comparisons to other recent events.
- jberryman 6y agoVague predictions of inevitable violence (never "when we start a civil war", always "when the civil war happens" or "when the shit hits the fan") does seem like a hallmark of the far right, or white grievance.
- notjes 6y agoHN admins will ban this thread in 3...2...
- Bart073T 6y agoThere's cryptocurrency.
- rvz 6y agoYes. You can now see the true extent of their tricks and possible ways of shaking the WSB traders. Obviously these large guys are using their influence and connections to drive FUD, lies and fake news to frame their enemy / target (/r/WSB) to give in and sell. Even the stock brokers are in on it. All of this to protect the losses of the irresponsible and the greediest of hedge-funds and short-sellers. Best part? They are not even hiding it. Everyone can see the message.
- tiahura 6y agoAm I the only one who see's parallels between the above paranoia and "the election was stolen and they're not even hiding it?"
- kyuudou 6y ago> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? A clever way to create a situation to pass mass gun control and limit those pesky civil liberties, no?
- kmeisthax 6y agoIf I were running a financial brokerage I'd totally do this, too. It's not a matter of "helping my hedge fund broker friends", it's a matter of "how do we keep the SEC off our backs". Remember: Robinhood is already being charged with securities law violation for giving their customers a raw deal on order execution. We usually don't see distributed market manipulation like this, but I wouldn't be surprised if a shitton of people buying GameStop to squeeze a short-seller breaks securities law. Does it feel good to get one up on a hedge fund idiot that was trying to manipulate GameStop the other way? Yes - but this is, at best, financial vigilantism.
- koheripbal 6y agoIt's not only that - the current price of AMC, GME, etc... are being manipulated artificially. This is text-book illegal activity. There is no logical derivation of GameStop's financial books that would warrant the kind of stock price it has. It is very very clearly market manipulation, and these exact sorts of manipulations are commonly prosecuted.
- virmundi 6y agoThe price of GME is due to a squeeze. The shorts have to get out. People know this. They are refusing to sell. Manipulation but legal.
- hyko 6y agoThere’s nothing illegal about buying a stock, or even voicing your opinion about a stock. If only value investing was legal, the stock market look and operate very differently to today. Edited to add: ultimately the law should be there to prevent fraud, not to restrict capital ownership and financial autonomy to a handful of cronies. You know, what they call a free market. Incidentally, if this had been a properly regulated market to begin with, the price inflation would not have been possible.
- unityByFreedom 6y agoIf you're able to rally people on social media is that manipulation? I'm not so sure. I think it's very risky for the investors but I don't know whether the SEC has stuff that would cover this. And even if there were a law, if you somehow have your thumb on the social media hype button then how would you enforce that law? Makes me think nothing unruly is going on, just a bubble that will inevitably collapse and make Musk etc. rich once more just like during the dot com era. Some people only know how to make money through theft and I'm not surprised we've found ourselves here after the last 4 years.
- loceng 6y agoIt's also ironic that one of the supposed ethos of Bitcoin is to circumvent these powers that be - meanwhile every time there's an upward surge in pricing Coinbase conveniently isn't accessible which temporarily blocks impulse sellers and stops a rush of the "army of HODLers" from selling. If this behaviour isn't illegal it certainly should be, it's manipulation.
- cableshaft 6y agoWhen that happens it's usually at the same time as a huge influx of new users and/or user activity. I agree it's somewhat suspicious if it happens all the time, like this has happened enough times why haven't you designed your infrastructure to handle surges more gracefully, but for the most part I think it's legit. If we assume intentional malice every time a website goes down, that's a dangerous precedent for the tech industry. The corporations I've worked for had nothing to do with finances but managed to have several major outages I've sat in on that have lasted as little as 2 hours and as much as 48 hours. They were pretty much always network or server related, sometimes unrelated to the business entirely (a T1 line got cut accidentally by the city in one case). Those corporations didn't want to go down, and often lost some serious money as a result. I imagine Coinbase loses out on a good amount of money every time they go down as well. I also expect it's at least somewhat overreported or only a partial outage as well. One person has an issue and announces it and everyone just repeats it without checking themselves. There was at least two instances when I saw people say Coinbase was down and I tried logging in myself and had no issues.
- llampx 6y agoBy crashing, or giving the appearance of crashing, Coinbase, Kraken etc maintain plausible deniability. RH is going whole hog "look at us, we are denying you the ability to buy this security so that hedge funds can drive the price down, and all you can do is sell your existing position - can't even short it if you like"
- xiphias2 6y agoBitcoin is a monetary escape valve from the current financial system according to Janet Yellen. It’s a 20 year long trend that can work peer to peer even without any exchange. Of course Coinbase makes things simpler, but it’s not needed.
- gspr 6y ago> This sort of stuff will put people more and more on edge, there is the deplatforming going on, people asserted their power financially, and now getting that removed too Don't compare deplatforming and this. Deplatforming is akin to throwing a customer out of the grocery store for doing nazi salutes in the vegetable aisle. What Robinhood is doing is akin to throwing a customer out of the grocery store because you don't agree with his choice of vegetables.
- cambalache 6y ago> Deplatforming is > throwing a customer out of the grocery store because you don't agree with his choice of vegetables. There, fixed for you.
- carrabre 6y agofacts
- dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 6y agoThis is a twitter post of a screenshot. There's almost no substance here. We don't know why or even if this happened. So the immediate leap to talk of violence as a reaction is incendiary.
- djrogers 6y agoIt’s happening. You can’t find GME on Robinhood unless it’s in one of your lists, and when you do it says “This stock is not supported in Robinhood”. There are millions of users of this app, and it’s easy enough to verify - why the skepticism?
- dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 6y agoOnly because I think it's prudent to wait until more information is available (than was provided in the original link) before talking about violent repercussions. I have little doubt that it's happening, but the twitter link was not substantive in comparison to: https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-informed-through-market-volatility https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/28/keeping-customers-...
- WhompingWindows 6y agoViolence against whom and how? Do the powers that rule the USA truly fear any commoners? I doubt it, the rich are ensconced in private jets, mansions, posh offices, and do not interact with commoners, nor are they easily targeted due to lack of proximity and knowledge. It's not like the French Revolution, where the mobs knew precisely where the king, queen, and legislature were, and could assail them personally.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoYou had me, up until "legislature". Recent events seem to indicate the people know precisely where the legislature meets.
- Fjolsvith 6y agoIts called "RedPilling".
- fvbdbdhbdb 6y agoSerious question. Is the whole David vs Goliath narrative unfounded? Over the last 8-10 years online activism/mobs have increasingly been co-opted by those in power as a means of astroturfing. I think it is totally fair to be skeptical and ask whether that is going on here. One thing is for sure. Even if this is organic, it won’t be next time. After seeing this why wouldn’t some hedge fund orchestrate something like this to manipulate the market?
- llampx 6y agoIf you are coming with such a narrative it would behoove you to come with proof.
- fvbdbdhbdb 6y agoWhat narrative am I coming with? My comment is questioning the prevailing David vs Goliath narrative. Based on past events, I think there is enough of a prior probability of astroturfing to be skeptical. We will find out whether this was organic or not as things evolve. But it would be a mistake to not think that some hedge fund manager, oligarch, etc. somewhere is paying attention and thinking about how they might be able to co-opt.
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- jariel 6y agoNo, this is the market defending itself from unwanted shenanigans. Listed companies want nothing to do with this. Restaurants like customers, but imagine a stampede of 1000 people rushing through the doors, it's not what they want. The populism here is getting ridiculous, I don't think most people have any understanding of what's going on.
- swader999 6y agoIt seems more like big fish stuck in a losing set of trades are pulling whatever strings they can to save themselves.
- jariel 6y agoThey will take a haircut and move on. Some of the plebes rushing the doors are going to get crushed. Given that a lot of people egging the plebes absolutely 'know better' you have to wonder what their motivations are.
- dna_polymerase 6y agoYou know, you could always just pay for your trades and get them executed as you wish. Or you use a service that is free, but please stop complaining.
- Macha 6y agoHonestly, I don't see where the attempt to equate the WSB people out to make a quick buck by gambling and hope they win out over the hedge funds as being that connected to the deplatforming of right wing people - I'm sure given "the right" and "wall street bets" are large groups that there is some overlap, but in Europe I know plenty of people following along the stock market with no connection to current US issues. People have found an unpopular target (large funds, still a lot of dislike built up over the 2008 recession, current inflated housing markets in many cities) and there's a swing in popular emotion and yes, public figures have egged it on at this stage, but it's not really a protest against donald trump's deplatforming or liberal elites that some people are trying to make it out to be. Plenty more people willing to take risks on that among the middle class when the stock market is the only way to even keep the value of their savings anyway. My savings account has an actual interest rate that was cut from 0.50% to 0.01% this year, whereas 2020 excluded, inflation has been around 1% in my country. Many of my friends in similar situations have gotten involved in stocks under a similar background and a not insignificant number of them are operating under logic like "90% in long term stocks, 10% for whatever crazy long bets" (like which airlines are going to come out of this, whatever stock reddit is pumping at the moment, bitcoin or companies like AMD a few months ago which they're like "I use this stuff and so many insitutional investors are completely clueless on the market dynamics"). So you get people with "stupid bets" funds, and an idea that gets momentum (The shorts cannot not buy, let's outwait them), and this is the result.
- cableshaft 6y agoYeah, there isn't necessarily a ton of overlap. I'm pretty liberal but I follow this stuff, not so much WSB (and no skin in the game for this GME craziness) but crypto, and put money I'm willing to lose into these things periodically. I've lost some money, sure, but I'm significantly up overall.
- evv555 6y ago>This is why I put academic fields adjacent to "identity politics" in the same category as climate change This is why academic fields involved with "identity politics" are in the same class as "scientists" involved in climate change denial and questionable nutrition/smoking studies. Once there were academics involved in "critic theory" which more or less used Marxist level of analysis. A thorn in the side of the establishment. A branch within this field took the language of Marxism but replaced capitalist/working class with identities(e.g white men/minority women). Ofcourse those in power have supported this branch of critic theory and have gotten to the point where they even use it as a wedge issue. At this point this is the orthodox branch of "critic theory" and it's not because of intellectual merit.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoRemember how quaint Occupy Wall St. seemed back in 2011? They were maligned as a bunch of privileged wannabe hippie kids. The economy was "hopelessly complex" and "how were we to know" etc. Seems we're way past that, to blatant protection of the wealthy over a fluctuation in .025% of the stock market.
- cashewchoo 6y agoI worked in proprietary trading for about half a decade. I think the biggest thing that the lay-person doesn't understand is that thinking of hedge funds (and other proprietary firms), banks, exchanges and ATS's, retail brokerages, the SEC, and lawmakers as all being either one entity or all being on the same side is just absolutely incorrect. They all need each other, but by and large they are not friends. Some claims I've seen that are just comical to me: "The SEC is going to step in to save hedge funds" The relationship between regulators and proprietary firms is particularly cagey. The SEC constantly audits them and asks, in my ex-professional opinions, extremely annoying questions about even the most innocuous trading activity. (Annoying because they take so much time because frequently, not knowing what the firm is doing, they ask questions that internal tooling is just not prepared to answer, thus requiring custom development; and annoying because some of them feel like they're just the SEC trying to use their authority to conduct audits to learn more about the industry). But I digress. The SEC is absolutely not going to step in and do a prop shop a favor. Their concern is with the efficient and accurate functioning of the equities market. The fact the GME, a company with no news releases and no change in their (honestly dismal) fundamentals, has experienced such absolutely insane volatility (there are large numbers of options contracts with less volatility, for crying out loud!) is absolutely a concern for them. The fact that "what is the price of GME right now", asked to a person who looked at Apple Stocks app yesterday but not yet today, is "somewhere between 10 dollars and 1000 dollars", is absolutely a major cause for concern to them. Equity markets exist to discover pricing and transfer risk. It's hard to transfer risk if you don't have any idea of the pricing! "retail brokerages are cancel culturing the GME rocketship!" and similar rhetoric, especially with aphorisms suggesting that the SEC or shadowy "the rich and powerful" are pressing them to do so. I really, really doubt it. Retail brokerages toe a very fine line, because on one hand they obviously really want people to store their money with them (e.g. Schwab makes like 80% of its operating revenue from interest on uninvested cash balances) and also to use their trading services. But at the same time, they are taking as clients some of the most dangerous creatures known to man: retail investors. They're dangerous because they have so little clue what they're doing (which is like, fine, you know? this is no judgement on them) that there is a very real responsibility places on the retail brokerage to protect them from themselves. There's a reason you have to apply and be approved to trade options, and there's various levels of approval for various risk categories too. You need at least 25k in balances to be a pattern day trader. There's precedent for brokerages limiting access to some ETFs that expose equities investors to the kinds of leveraged risk that is more typical of options. Brokerages have been sued - successfully - for not doing their fiduciary duty to educate investors about risk. I am absolutely unsurprised that retail brokerages are limiting trading of GME, AMC, etc. I can already see the lawsuits coming when this thing folds - "Why did you let me trade GME given the volatility, especially after the SEC even made a statement about it? I am a retail investor and your client, and cannot be expected to know better, and you failed in your fiduciary duty to me." This is absolutely something a retail brokerage would do to protect themselves from regulatory scrutiny. (I had more to vent, but this post is already huge so I'll stop here. You get my gist, though.)
- timkam 6y ago> Even more with some irresponsible newspapers blaming the whole thing on GamerGate and Alt-Right, effectively pushing away people that previously could be on their side. I didn't read any such claim in my German and Scandinavian news diet, is this a US-only thing? Here, the consensus seems to be that what happens is a somewhat well-deserved embarrassment.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 974373493200 6y ago> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? I think creating and using decentralized alternatives beyond the control of the state and affiliated corporations is a much better tool for creating lasting change. Violent revolutions tend to just replace (or restyle) the ruling class without significant changes to their behavior.
- 77pt77 6y ago> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? They do realize that and are confident that they will win. In the end it boils down to that. In here we have a case of the wrong people succeeding at a game that de jure is supposed to be open to everyone but de facto is only open to the right people.
- Damorian 6y ago"They're a private company! They can restrict their product for corrupt political and financial purposes and this is good... for... reasons... at least that's what the tv/social media told me."
- rorykoehler 6y agoExactly my thoughts. It's only a matter of time now. I'm most surprised it hasn't started in earnest yet.
- mandeepj 6y agoI hope you get well soon. Maybe see a psychiatrist. You are taking Stocks linking them to alt-right then to violence. What? You look like a close devotee of an incompetent president whom we just fired. He was also super-spreader of conspiracy theories. No one had any problem with any other conservative president or progressive for that matter until he showed up.
- umvi 6y ago> the powers that rule USA don't realize that soon the only tool left to common people is violence? This is a dangerous thing to say in 2021. Merely suggesting violence is an option or eventuality could be considered incitement and get you banned from every major internet platform.
- tima101 6y agoPeople who engineered this fake outrage made a lot of money by buying early and selling early, everyone who believed this scam lost money. Let's punish hedge funds - fake outrage Stocks are climbing up - fear of missing out Restrictions on platforms to prevent people from falling into this scam - fake outrage Scammers' freedom of speech is in danger - fake outrage Looks like we entered new era where fake outrage on social media (Reddit, HN and Twitter) can make scammers a lot of money. I am surprised that HN community is falling for this scam.
- jl2718 6y ago> GamerGate Actually it seems related to me. Leveraged short-selling is a tactic of activist investors to take control of a company, and there was an article about what they wanted to do with it. No doubt the past actions of activist investors in the gaming industry was fuel for this fire. I’m not a gamer and I don’t know what is going on, but I think it has something to do with getting rid of the ownership model of games to make way for cloud gaming and advertising, served with a political agenda. GameStop made the ownership model work. Every major cloud service provider, social media company, and their investors all want it gone. Gamers know that ownership is the only way to keep politics out of gaming.
- dang 6y agoSome people are complaining to me that this comment is an implicit call to violence. It's not so hard to see why they might be reading it that way. Please don't post like that to HN. Instead, either post comments that are unambiguously within the site guidelines to begin with, or be careful to disambiguate your intent. Otherwise we end up in flamewar hell or something even worse than flamewar hell. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=disambiguate%20burden%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- areyousure 6y agoThis reaction was predicted in this sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25941883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25941883 (dang: Thank you for all your moderation. This is a meta-comment, not a complaint.)