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> 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 loo

> 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 ago
The 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 ago
  There's no public pressure to do that, the only pressure is from Wall Street itself. The public is cheering the whole thing.
  - whoknew1122 6y ago
    How 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 ago
      If 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.
      - jfim 6y ago
        Why would GameStop have gone bust? Even if GameStop stock would trade at zero, the company still exists until it runs out of money and declares bankruptcy, which is independent of its stock price. In this case, it's not really saving any jobs, since GameStop employees (excluding higher ranked employees) probably don't have any part of their compensation that's stock based. Toys R Us was a leveraged buyout, which is definitely a much more ethically dubious strategy, and that can cause jobs to be lost. This won't cause any jobs at GameStop to be lost, although there probably will be some unhappy traders and people left holding bags of GameStop stock.
        jsdwarf 6y ago
        Bankruptcy is not independent from the stock price. If your company goes bankrupt, its shares are voided.
        jfim 6y ago
        You're right, what I meant is that the share price doesn't affect the finances of the company (eg. a company that sells widgets makes the same amount of money whether their stock is worth $1 or $100000). As you point out, the share price should in theory reflect the value of the company (bankrupt company -> share price of $0), but a fluctuating stock price doesn't really change the value of the company itself (excluding shares that it owns, obviously).
        andruby 6y ago
        If GameStop trades below book value, then someone could do a takeover, sell all the assets and make a profit.
        jfim 6y ago
        Good point. Out of curiosity, has that actually happened to a public stock? I'd assume the minority shareholders would have standing for a lawsuit if someone were to do a hostile takeover of a stock and liquidate the assets of the company.
    - herewegoagain2 6y ago
      "The common person always loses when bubbles burst." That is a tautology, because you define the "common person" as the person who loses. I'm sure there were people who made good money in the 2008 housing bubble. Didn't they all live like kings for a while, because they could borrow arbitrary sums against their houses? Similarly, some people may make good money on that GameStop thing now. The "common people" who didn't participate in this will probably never even notice. At most they'll notice that their favorite shopping mall is closing, but that is part of a larger trend. And they can now shop on Amazon instead, so their quality of life probably remains the same or gets improved.
      - whoknew1122 6y ago
        Actually, I never defined the common person. Because I felt it's pretty obvious. The common person is the majority of Americans who live paycheck-to-paycheck and don't invest in the market. Those who don't participate will be negatively impacted if this causes another recession, which is likely as investors get spooked by another bubble burst. Which means standard of living, job benefits, and salaries will continue to stagnate. This also ignores the fact that we've moved from guaranteed pensions to 401ks, which are heavily dependent on hedge funds. If hedge funds lose their shirts, they'll get a bailout from the government because we didn't learn our lesson about too big to fail last time. Which will mean government austerity in other areas, typically starting in social welfare programs.
        thatfrenchguy 6y ago
        401ks, given their rules, are not reliant on hedge funds, unless you expert hedge funds to be any good at influencing pricing in the long term
    - ballenf 6y ago
      > 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) The "central conceit" is not that the market is a "good arbiter" of the value of a company. Just that it's the least bad one. The central conceit of every alternative to capitalism is that there's such a thing as a singular, coherent definition of "the value of a company" and that it's consistently, accurately measurable by some central authority.
- Communitivity 6y ago
  Dogecoin subreddit may get banned too. Saw elsewhere that they're trying to push it to $1 (it's at $0.01 and the push has raised it 72%). Half tempted to drop $1k in it, in a Just-In-Case thing. Supposedly the total volume of Dogecoin is only 128k coins, though that sounds low. If it is that low it explains why the coin is so volatile. My main cryptocurrency positions are Bitcoin and Cardano.
  - swader999 6y ago
    Too many whales in dogecoin that want to keep a lid on it. It's meant to be used for charity and community building. Sometimes you can play the run and use derivatives to short it on the way down. Easier plays than this though.
  - throwaway12757 6y ago
    There is no way that's true because I mined and then lost 81k dogecoins because I reformatted my computer.
  - Matticus_Rex 6y ago
    Total volume of dogecoin is ~128 billion coins, not 128k.
    - Communitivity 6y ago
      That is a heck of a decimal point error on my part. Thanks for the correction.
  - cableshaft 6y ago
    It's definitely not 128k coins. When it was first created it was notable for having such a huge supply of coins that people could have silly fun with it and not care about the 'value' of it. That hasn't remained true, but it was the initial idea behind it, a joke coin people could give tons of coins to other people to for pennies.
- melomal 6y ago
  It would be interesting to know what the difference is between CNBC talking heads VS a community of "traders"? Jimmy Cramer pumping stocks every evening to his boomer audience which ultimately has some effects (not sure how much though) on stock prices seems fine but a group of people discussing stocks seems like a threat...
  - swader999 6y ago
    It's a small club and you ain't in it is what this all comes down to. USA a banana republic more and more sadly.
    - NDizzle 6y ago
      Are you a Zappa fan? If not, check out Frank Zappa. The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing.
  - realce 6y ago
    Really - is a TV network much different from a subreddit where only the mods can post?
    - melomal 6y ago
      Exactly, this is the point that I am trying to figure out. Moderators control the conversation and that's it. So what is the difference between CNBC talking heads pumping up a stock VS subredditors who are, as you might imagine, everyday people just having some financial fun and sharing ideas. One can get paid off whilst the other cannot I imagine is the difference.
- whobar 6y ago
  Just looking at this from a technical perspective, it'll be pretty exciting if all this ends up leading to an explosion in the take up of self-hosted social media platforms. The question is, will the creators of these communities trust cloud providers where the platforms are hosted to not de-platform them, or will we end up with P2P, distributed networks instead?
  - gonzo41 6y ago
    When you take you're tech to it's limit you get mailing lists, again.
    - cousin_it 6y ago
      Then email providers will kick out unapproved users, DNS will kick out unapproved email providers, and so on. I want an anti-authoritarian internet. The past year has been surreal.
      - laurent92 6y ago
        Until China, Japan and Russia unite to provide disenfranchised Americans with a free internet that is off-limits from the grabbing hands of the US elites. And it will thrive and will be a better place to make more money that SV for 5-10 years, until it gets censored like any public space.
        sidlls 6y ago
        Including “China” and “free internet” in the same sentence is hilarious. Unless something like “will never tolerate” is in between them.
        pbourke 6y ago
        Are you seriously calling for China, of all countries, to create a network free of censorship?
  - sjg007 6y ago
- bitstan 6y ago
  Would be interesting if WSB was allowed to invest in private startups as easily as they can invest in meme stocks. Robinhood doesn't like us? We'll start out own. Reddit doesn't like us? Let's just kickstart and crowd-source another. This idea that the common man needs to be protected from himself is paternalistic and condescending. Private equity is the means of collective action and the rich people don't want us to organize without their blessings.
  - aphextron 6y ago
    >Would be interesting if WSB was allowed to invest in private startups as easily as they can invest in meme stocks. Not enough liquidity. WSB has very little to do with long term investing. It's just about using the stock market as a casino.
    - sidlls 6y ago
      Which is more or less how most big investment (hedge) and prop trading firms use it anyway. The key difference here as the same is it always is: which group has the ear of those with power.
  - xhrpost 6y ago
    > Would be interesting if WSB was allowed to invest in private startups as easily as they can invest in meme stocks. Technically the JOBS act is supposed to allow this (crowdfunding). May not be as easy as buying stock but at least it's legal now.
  - silicon2401 6y ago
    > This idea that the common man needs to be protected from himself is paternalistic Interesting word choice. Conservative wording of "common man", but liberal wording of "paternalistic". I don't mind the former but I do wonder how a father would be more inclined to protect a child from itself than a mother; if anything, I would find maternalistic a more fitting descriptor.
  - tachyonbeam 6y ago
    > Reddit doesn't like us? Let's just kickstart and crowd-source another. There's Ruqqus which is already a working alternative to reddit. However, what I found going there is that there are a lot of anti-left memes being shared. Some amount of toxicity. I'm all for freedom of speech, but I wish the platform was a bit less political, a more neutral alternative to reddit... but hey, if enough people leave reddit, maybe it will become just that. https://ruqqus.com/+Commentary/post/74iv/lol-you-thought-that-was-a https://ruqqus.com/+Commentary/post/74iv/lol-you-thought-tha...
- elliekelly 6y ago
  I can’t imagine a scenario where the SEC goes after reddit of all places.
  - Pulcinella 6y ago
    There are other ways of applying pressure. AWS hosting Wikileaks was not illegal but they were still pressured to stop hosting if they wanted lucrative hosting contracts with the federal government. Now I doubt Reddit has huge contracts with the government, but I’m sure the government could find something to harass them with if it wanted to. Drive long enough and a cop will eventually find a reason to pull you over. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-website-cables-servers-amazon https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-webs... http://scripting.com/stories/2010/12/28/usGovtABigUserOfAmazonWebS.html http://scripting.com/stories/2010/12/28/usGovtABigUserOfAmaz...
    - elliekelly 6y ago
      Definitely. It wouldn’t at all surprise me to find out reddit was being pressured in some way but I think that pressure is far more likely to come from investment folks than regulators. And I think elite investor class pressure would be far more threatening & potentially costly to reddit than anything the SEC might be able to dig up.
- Sebb767 6y ago
  I'm not so sure. This subreddit is immensely popular right now, when they get banned the receiving backslash might be Reddits Digg-moment. And they are probably aware of this.
  - carrabre 6y ago
    If they ban it will be the beginning of the end for reddit. As i think is the case for Discord.
    - MrMan 6y ago
      Nah
- WSB_Mod 6y ago
  With 175MM+ pageviews yesterday alone, I'm sure they're ecstatic about WSB's growth. This chapter in WSB has brought forth substantially better communication with the admins than we'd ever had in the past, including a direct line to Alexis. Edit: Thank you all for the outpour of support! Our main challenges thus far have been technical (hitting API limits, automoderator backlog, etc.) however, those issues have now been resolved and our bots are running better than ever before. We largely owe our success in handling this to the Reddit engineering team who has routinely stepped up and fixed things. As chaotic as the scene has been for us moderators, I'm sure they have been under much more pressure. If you know a reddit engineer, please give them your thanks as they have done a phenomenal job. For those curious, the surge in activity broke a number of things. Here are just a few: > modmail surpassing 80,000+ messages resulting in modmail going down > constant threads hitting 100,000 comments resulting in slow loading site-wide > automoderator getting backlogged and taking 30+ minutes to parse comments leading to terrible comments getting through. All these issues are now resolved, so once again, big thanks to the Reddit engineering team!
  - realce 6y ago
    Thanks for your work - As a former super-mod I know how crazy and thankless it can be. You guys have a real scene going on, it's pretty beautiful.
  - guardiangod 6y ago
    Don't stop. I am 100% behind you guys.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ta302349 6y ago
  What SEC rule is WSB violating? I've seen no evidence yet that there is any sort of pump and dump collusion, the speculative bubble / stick-it-to-the-market-manipulators deal on WallStreetBets seems to be fairly organically driven as many memes are. There's no rules that I can think of against "tulip mania" type speculative bubbles. If there were, a huge amount of people would have been in serious trouble for the 2008 real estate bubble / crash. To be honest, I think the recent restrictions on trading specific stocks (on Robinhood etc.) is absolutely dumb. Apparently, the sort of crappy market manipulation that led to the 2008 Volkswagen "short squeeze" or the 2010 "flash crash" is absolutely fine because it was driven by traders. But an amateur mob performing the short squeeze must be stopped at all cost? What bullshit. Either the "casino" should be open to all, or rules that apply to the "amateur mob" should apply to the HFT and derivatives market as well.
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    None, but Reddit doesn't need a valid reason to ban a subreddit. Where there's a will, there's a way.
  - tylerhou 6y ago
    > What SEC rule is WSB violating? Market manipulation. Loosely, market manipulation happens when you artificially influence the price of a stock, resulting in a personal gain. Buying stock with the intention of causing a short squeeze can be interpreted to fit that definition. I believe that WSB is creating artificial demand to try to "screw over" certain institutional investors. I am not a lawyer; this is not a legal interpretation. > Apparently, the sort of crappy market manipulation that led to the 2008 Volkswagen "short squeeze" or the 2010 "flash crash" is absolutely fine because it was driven by traders. How were they "absolutely fine?" You do know that regulators attempted to prosecute the traders/executives responsible for the 2008 VW short squeeze [1], and successfully prosecuted a trader for the 2010 flash crash [2]? For the VW short squeeze, regulators were not able to find evidence that the traders involved intended to cause a short squeeze or engaged in any artificial demand; they actually demanded the stock because they sought to take over VW. This is also evidenced by the fact the Porsche sold stock on the open market once they released that a squeeze was happening [3]. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/ad782326-ed02-11e5-888e-2eadd5fbc4a4 https://www.ft.com/content/ad782326-ed02-11e5-888e-2eadd5fbc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash [3] https://www.ft.com/content/0a58b63a-4294-3e07-8390-c3aabef39a26 https://www.ft.com/content/0a58b63a-4294-3e07-8390-c3aabef39...
- MrMan 6y ago
  I think its fine that the SEC attempts to clean up stock manipulation schemes. The reason anyone cares is that you can lose all your money playing around in the market, and the SEC is responsible for trying to keep people from being taken advantage of, and in cases like this swept up in manias.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    You can lose all your money in the market playing around in the market. If I could sign some sort of statement saying I know what I'm doing, I won't invest more than I'm willing to lose, and while I may make extremely risky bets, I'm willing to forego your "protection" in favor of being able to lose all of my money, I would. And I did, because I'm a registered investor. But this isn't available to most people, only the top 10%.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      I agree with your skepticism of registered investor requirements, but that's not really a related issue. Regulators and platforms intervene in this way against even the most sophisticated investors; the possibility of a trading freeze when the market exhibits crazy volatility is well-known.
      - freeone3000 6y ago
        I can buy GameStop. My friend can't. Trading freeze for everyone, sure. Trading freeze for some people, but not for other people? That's fucking bullshit.
- mkhpalm 6y ago
  > Given the track record Reddit has of keeling over to public pressure I'm not sure I'd call it keeling over to "public" pressure.
Bud 6y ago
There's not any real reason to be concerned about this. Not yet, at least. Furthermore, this comment is offensive. Let's please not pretend that Facebook and Twitter were "looking for an excuse" before deplatforming Trump. They were entirely justified and would have been justified in doing so many years before they eventually did so. Let's also not put the word "incite" in dick quotes barely three weeks after an insurrection and attempted coup. There was actual incitement of violence in that case.
- herewegoagain2 6y ago
  Let's all pretend to have the same opinion and believe in the narrative. Why exactly, again?
- listless 6y ago
  I think there's plenty of reason to be concerned, but certainly not enough to be terrified or overreact with comments like "this comment is offensive".
  - Bud 6y ago
    I don't think that expressing my opinion is an overreaction. It's offensive to minimize what happened on January 6th. That's what you do when you mock the notion that the president incited violence.
    - jcadam 6y ago
      > It's offensive to minimize what happened on January 6th. That's what you do when you mock the notion that the president incited violence. No, that doesn't follow.
    - juanani 6y ago
      And I am offended when a few loud voices maximize it. It is called making a mountain out of a mole hill and the media did well here to convince so many to not give too much thought about giving up their rights again. Very similar to 9/11 except less casualties thankfully. Just an interesting observation of how much control screens can exert then vs now. More are connected with constant access. We need better screen diets.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hagibborim 6y ago
Along these lines, bad-faith actors can plan racist messages as a pretext for banning arbitrary communities
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  There is a precedent for this, look at all the shenanigans r/AgainstHateSubreddits is known for.
esyir 6y ago
Private platforms, can't do shit about them, yada yada yada. That's bullshit. The principle, and thus the the right to free speech is the fundamental value of a free country. Hiding behind the "they're a private company, they can do what they want" is nonsense when the vast majority of communication flows through them. I'm wondering though what happens if section 230 was modified to only allow for filtering and removal of spam (I'm expecting wiggle here in how it's abused) and illegal content.
- littlecranky67 6y ago
  IANAL, but common misconception is that a constitution regulates the rights between individuals/citizens of that state. But this is wrong, the constitution regulates the rights of an individual against the state/government. That is, you have the freedom of speech against any government entities and cannot be prosecuted for exercising it. But if you come to my bar/house whatever and I don't like your opinion, I can show you the door and you can't quote the constitution and refuse to leave because you are exercising your rights.
  - echelon 6y ago
    This sucks when there are only three or four bars and they all have the same corporate interest. Look at Visa going after porn and private sex work. This entire culture of trying to control what others can say via deplatformization is neoliberal fascism. Bad things get said. But free speech protects all of us from tyranny, and we have to defend it. Because they'll come after you and your ideas next. Americans have thick skin, or at least most of us do. It's a consequence of our liberty, and it's a defining trait of our system.
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    Civil Liberties don't exist if you leave them to the public sector. The US Government hosts and produces virtually nothing on it's own and just about everything you interact with is run or produced by a corporation. If you leave the responsibility of Free Speech to the Free Market then you end up having freedom of press only for the people who own one.
paganel 6y ago
> be painted as trying to "incite" violence, They're using the "terrorist" word already in many cases.
sandworm101 6y ago
>> only tool left to common people is violence? I am genuinely interested in the physicality of how that would play out. A mob with pitchforks makes a run at a Facebook HQ. Do they kidnap employees until they find one with the access to re-initialize the account? I guess they would have to keep the hostages forever, else the accounts be disabled again the next day. Do they setup a camp outside with the declared intent to launch an attack should certain accounts not get enough likes? How long could that last? Or do they break into a datacenter and attempt to do it themselves? I'm reminded of that iMac scene in Zoolander.
- DamnYuppie 6y ago
  You are thinking to gentle and precise. Think more along the lines of setting data centers and office buildings on fire. Find anyone who has FB on a linked in profile, go their house, and burn it down. Let it all be known that it was an act of war and watch the insurance companies cover nothing.
- bnjms 6y ago
  I don’t want to be banned but... You are, I think, blessed to not be able to imagine violence. When someone says violence is an outcome the violence becomes the goal — not reinstating accounts... You don’t physically attack a DC you sever as many links in and out as possible.
crudgen 6y ago
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” ― Warren Buffett

koheripbal 6y ago

The 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 ago
There's no public pressure to do that, the only pressure is from Wall Street itself. The public is cheering the whole thing.
- whoknew1122 6y ago
  How 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 ago
    If 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.
    - jfim 6y ago
      Why would GameStop have gone bust? Even if GameStop stock would trade at zero, the company still exists until it runs out of money and declares bankruptcy, which is independent of its stock price. In this case, it's not really saving any jobs, since GameStop employees (excluding higher ranked employees) probably don't have any part of their compensation that's stock based. Toys R Us was a leveraged buyout, which is definitely a much more ethically dubious strategy, and that can cause jobs to be lost. This won't cause any jobs at GameStop to be lost, although there probably will be some unhappy traders and people left holding bags of GameStop stock.
      - jsdwarf 6y ago
        Bankruptcy is not independent from the stock price. If your company goes bankrupt, its shares are voided.
        jfim 6y ago
        You're right, what I meant is that the share price doesn't affect the finances of the company (eg. a company that sells widgets makes the same amount of money whether their stock is worth $1 or $100000). As you point out, the share price should in theory reflect the value of the company (bankrupt company -> share price of $0), but a fluctuating stock price doesn't really change the value of the company itself (excluding shares that it owns, obviously).
      - andruby 6y ago
        If GameStop trades below book value, then someone could do a takeover, sell all the assets and make a profit.
        jfim 6y ago
        Good point. Out of curiosity, has that actually happened to a public stock? I'd assume the minority shareholders would have standing for a lawsuit if someone were to do a hostile takeover of a stock and liquidate the assets of the company.
  - herewegoagain2 6y ago
    "The common person always loses when bubbles burst." That is a tautology, because you define the "common person" as the person who loses. I'm sure there were people who made good money in the 2008 housing bubble. Didn't they all live like kings for a while, because they could borrow arbitrary sums against their houses? Similarly, some people may make good money on that GameStop thing now. The "common people" who didn't participate in this will probably never even notice. At most they'll notice that their favorite shopping mall is closing, but that is part of a larger trend. And they can now shop on Amazon instead, so their quality of life probably remains the same or gets improved.
    - whoknew1122 6y ago
      Actually, I never defined the common person. Because I felt it's pretty obvious. The common person is the majority of Americans who live paycheck-to-paycheck and don't invest in the market. Those who don't participate will be negatively impacted if this causes another recession, which is likely as investors get spooked by another bubble burst. Which means standard of living, job benefits, and salaries will continue to stagnate. This also ignores the fact that we've moved from guaranteed pensions to 401ks, which are heavily dependent on hedge funds. If hedge funds lose their shirts, they'll get a bailout from the government because we didn't learn our lesson about too big to fail last time. Which will mean government austerity in other areas, typically starting in social welfare programs.
      - thatfrenchguy 6y ago
        401ks, given their rules, are not reliant on hedge funds, unless you expert hedge funds to be any good at influencing pricing in the long term
  - ballenf 6y ago
    > 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) The "central conceit" is not that the market is a "good arbiter" of the value of a company. Just that it's the least bad one. The central conceit of every alternative to capitalism is that there's such a thing as a singular, coherent definition of "the value of a company" and that it's consistently, accurately measurable by some central authority.
Communitivity 6y ago
Dogecoin subreddit may get banned too. Saw elsewhere that they're trying to push it to $1 (it's at $0.01 and the push has raised it 72%). Half tempted to drop $1k in it, in a Just-In-Case thing. Supposedly the total volume of Dogecoin is only 128k coins, though that sounds low. If it is that low it explains why the coin is so volatile. My main cryptocurrency positions are Bitcoin and Cardano.
- swader999 6y ago
  Too many whales in dogecoin that want to keep a lid on it. It's meant to be used for charity and community building. Sometimes you can play the run and use derivatives to short it on the way down. Easier plays than this though.
- throwaway12757 6y ago
  There is no way that's true because I mined and then lost 81k dogecoins because I reformatted my computer.
- Matticus_Rex 6y ago
  Total volume of dogecoin is ~128 billion coins, not 128k.
  - Communitivity 6y ago
    That is a heck of a decimal point error on my part. Thanks for the correction.
- cableshaft 6y ago
  It's definitely not 128k coins. When it was first created it was notable for having such a huge supply of coins that people could have silly fun with it and not care about the 'value' of it. That hasn't remained true, but it was the initial idea behind it, a joke coin people could give tons of coins to other people to for pennies.
melomal 6y ago
It would be interesting to know what the difference is between CNBC talking heads VS a community of "traders"? Jimmy Cramer pumping stocks every evening to his boomer audience which ultimately has some effects (not sure how much though) on stock prices seems fine but a group of people discussing stocks seems like a threat...
- swader999 6y ago
  It's a small club and you ain't in it is what this all comes down to. USA a banana republic more and more sadly.
  - NDizzle 6y ago
    Are you a Zappa fan? If not, check out Frank Zappa. The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing.
- realce 6y ago
  Really - is a TV network much different from a subreddit where only the mods can post?
  - melomal 6y ago
    Exactly, this is the point that I am trying to figure out. Moderators control the conversation and that's it. So what is the difference between CNBC talking heads pumping up a stock VS subredditors who are, as you might imagine, everyday people just having some financial fun and sharing ideas. One can get paid off whilst the other cannot I imagine is the difference.
whobar 6y ago
Just looking at this from a technical perspective, it'll be pretty exciting if all this ends up leading to an explosion in the take up of self-hosted social media platforms. The question is, will the creators of these communities trust cloud providers where the platforms are hosted to not de-platform them, or will we end up with P2P, distributed networks instead?
- gonzo41 6y ago
  When you take you're tech to it's limit you get mailing lists, again.
  - cousin_it 6y ago
    Then email providers will kick out unapproved users, DNS will kick out unapproved email providers, and so on. I want an anti-authoritarian internet. The past year has been surreal.
    - laurent92 6y ago
      Until China, Japan and Russia unite to provide disenfranchised Americans with a free internet that is off-limits from the grabbing hands of the US elites. And it will thrive and will be a better place to make more money that SV for 5-10 years, until it gets censored like any public space.
      - sidlls 6y ago
        Including “China” and “free internet” in the same sentence is hilarious. Unless something like “will never tolerate” is in between them.
      - pbourke 6y ago
        Are you seriously calling for China, of all countries, to create a network free of censorship?
- sjg007 6y ago
bitstan 6y ago
Would be interesting if WSB was allowed to invest in private startups as easily as they can invest in meme stocks. Robinhood doesn't like us? We'll start out own. Reddit doesn't like us? Let's just kickstart and crowd-source another. This idea that the common man needs to be protected from himself is paternalistic and condescending. Private equity is the means of collective action and the rich people don't want us to organize without their blessings.
- aphextron 6y ago
  >Would be interesting if WSB was allowed to invest in private startups as easily as they can invest in meme stocks. Not enough liquidity. WSB has very little to do with long term investing. It's just about using the stock market as a casino.
  - sidlls 6y ago
    Which is more or less how most big investment (hedge) and prop trading firms use it anyway. The key difference here as the same is it always is: which group has the ear of those with power.
- xhrpost 6y ago
  > Would be interesting if WSB was allowed to invest in private startups as easily as they can invest in meme stocks. Technically the JOBS act is supposed to allow this (crowdfunding). May not be as easy as buying stock but at least it's legal now.
- silicon2401 6y ago
  > This idea that the common man needs to be protected from himself is paternalistic Interesting word choice. Conservative wording of "common man", but liberal wording of "paternalistic". I don't mind the former but I do wonder how a father would be more inclined to protect a child from itself than a mother; if anything, I would find maternalistic a more fitting descriptor.
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  > Reddit doesn't like us? Let's just kickstart and crowd-source another. There's Ruqqus which is already a working alternative to reddit. However, what I found going there is that there are a lot of anti-left memes being shared. Some amount of toxicity. I'm all for freedom of speech, but I wish the platform was a bit less political, a more neutral alternative to reddit... but hey, if enough people leave reddit, maybe it will become just that. https://ruqqus.com/+Commentary/post/74iv/lol-you-thought-that-was-a https://ruqqus.com/+Commentary/post/74iv/lol-you-thought-tha...
elliekelly 6y ago
I can’t imagine a scenario where the SEC goes after reddit of all places.
- Pulcinella 6y ago
  There are other ways of applying pressure. AWS hosting Wikileaks was not illegal but they were still pressured to stop hosting if they wanted lucrative hosting contracts with the federal government. Now I doubt Reddit has huge contracts with the government, but I’m sure the government could find something to harass them with if it wanted to. Drive long enough and a cop will eventually find a reason to pull you over. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-website-cables-servers-amazon https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-webs... http://scripting.com/stories/2010/12/28/usGovtABigUserOfAmazonWebS.html http://scripting.com/stories/2010/12/28/usGovtABigUserOfAmaz...
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    Definitely. It wouldn’t at all surprise me to find out reddit was being pressured in some way but I think that pressure is far more likely to come from investment folks than regulators. And I think elite investor class pressure would be far more threatening & potentially costly to reddit than anything the SEC might be able to dig up.
Sebb767 6y ago
I'm not so sure. This subreddit is immensely popular right now, when they get banned the receiving backslash might be Reddits Digg-moment. And they are probably aware of this.
- carrabre 6y ago
  If they ban it will be the beginning of the end for reddit. As i think is the case for Discord.
  - MrMan 6y ago
    Nah
WSB_Mod 6y ago
With 175MM+ pageviews yesterday alone, I'm sure they're ecstatic about WSB's growth. This chapter in WSB has brought forth substantially better communication with the admins than we'd ever had in the past, including a direct line to Alexis. Edit: Thank you all for the outpour of support! Our main challenges thus far have been technical (hitting API limits, automoderator backlog, etc.) however, those issues have now been resolved and our bots are running better than ever before. We largely owe our success in handling this to the Reddit engineering team who has routinely stepped up and fixed things. As chaotic as the scene has been for us moderators, I'm sure they have been under much more pressure. If you know a reddit engineer, please give them your thanks as they have done a phenomenal job. For those curious, the surge in activity broke a number of things. Here are just a few: > modmail surpassing 80,000+ messages resulting in modmail going down > constant threads hitting 100,000 comments resulting in slow loading site-wide > automoderator getting backlogged and taking 30+ minutes to parse comments leading to terrible comments getting through. All these issues are now resolved, so once again, big thanks to the Reddit engineering team!
- realce 6y ago
  Thanks for your work - As a former super-mod I know how crazy and thankless it can be. You guys have a real scene going on, it's pretty beautiful.
- guardiangod 6y ago
  Don't stop. I am 100% behind you guys.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ta302349 6y ago
What SEC rule is WSB violating? I've seen no evidence yet that there is any sort of pump and dump collusion, the speculative bubble / stick-it-to-the-market-manipulators deal on WallStreetBets seems to be fairly organically driven as many memes are. There's no rules that I can think of against "tulip mania" type speculative bubbles. If there were, a huge amount of people would have been in serious trouble for the 2008 real estate bubble / crash. To be honest, I think the recent restrictions on trading specific stocks (on Robinhood etc.) is absolutely dumb. Apparently, the sort of crappy market manipulation that led to the 2008 Volkswagen "short squeeze" or the 2010 "flash crash" is absolutely fine because it was driven by traders. But an amateur mob performing the short squeeze must be stopped at all cost? What bullshit. Either the "casino" should be open to all, or rules that apply to the "amateur mob" should apply to the HFT and derivatives market as well.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  None, but Reddit doesn't need a valid reason to ban a subreddit. Where there's a will, there's a way.
- tylerhou 6y ago
  > What SEC rule is WSB violating? Market manipulation. Loosely, market manipulation happens when you artificially influence the price of a stock, resulting in a personal gain. Buying stock with the intention of causing a short squeeze can be interpreted to fit that definition. I believe that WSB is creating artificial demand to try to "screw over" certain institutional investors. I am not a lawyer; this is not a legal interpretation. > Apparently, the sort of crappy market manipulation that led to the 2008 Volkswagen "short squeeze" or the 2010 "flash crash" is absolutely fine because it was driven by traders. How were they "absolutely fine?" You do know that regulators attempted to prosecute the traders/executives responsible for the 2008 VW short squeeze [1], and successfully prosecuted a trader for the 2010 flash crash [2]? For the VW short squeeze, regulators were not able to find evidence that the traders involved intended to cause a short squeeze or engaged in any artificial demand; they actually demanded the stock because they sought to take over VW. This is also evidenced by the fact the Porsche sold stock on the open market once they released that a squeeze was happening [3]. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/ad782326-ed02-11e5-888e-2eadd5fbc4a4 https://www.ft.com/content/ad782326-ed02-11e5-888e-2eadd5fbc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash [3] https://www.ft.com/content/0a58b63a-4294-3e07-8390-c3aabef39a26 https://www.ft.com/content/0a58b63a-4294-3e07-8390-c3aabef39...
MrMan 6y ago
I think its fine that the SEC attempts to clean up stock manipulation schemes. The reason anyone cares is that you can lose all your money playing around in the market, and the SEC is responsible for trying to keep people from being taken advantage of, and in cases like this swept up in manias.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  You can lose all your money in the market playing around in the market. If I could sign some sort of statement saying I know what I'm doing, I won't invest more than I'm willing to lose, and while I may make extremely risky bets, I'm willing to forego your "protection" in favor of being able to lose all of my money, I would. And I did, because I'm a registered investor. But this isn't available to most people, only the top 10%.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I agree with your skepticism of registered investor requirements, but that's not really a related issue. Regulators and platforms intervene in this way against even the most sophisticated investors; the possibility of a trading freeze when the market exhibits crazy volatility is well-known.
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      I can buy GameStop. My friend can't. Trading freeze for everyone, sure. Trading freeze for some people, but not for other people? That's fucking bullshit.
mkhpalm 6y ago
> Given the track record Reddit has of keeling over to public pressure I'm not sure I'd call it keeling over to "public" pressure.

Bud 6y ago

There's not any real reason to be concerned about this. Not yet, at least. Furthermore, this comment is offensive. Let's please not pretend that Facebook and Twitter were "looking for an excuse" before deplatforming Trump. They were entirely justified and would have been justified in doing so many years before they eventually did so. Let's also not put the word "incite" in dick quotes barely three weeks after an insurrection and attempted coup. There was actual incitement of violence in that case.

herewegoagain2 6y ago
Let's all pretend to have the same opinion and believe in the narrative. Why exactly, again?
listless 6y ago
I think there's plenty of reason to be concerned, but certainly not enough to be terrified or overreact with comments like "this comment is offensive".
- Bud 6y ago
  I don't think that expressing my opinion is an overreaction. It's offensive to minimize what happened on January 6th. That's what you do when you mock the notion that the president incited violence.
  - jcadam 6y ago
    > It's offensive to minimize what happened on January 6th. That's what you do when you mock the notion that the president incited violence. No, that doesn't follow.
  - juanani 6y ago
    And I am offended when a few loud voices maximize it. It is called making a mountain out of a mole hill and the media did well here to convince so many to not give too much thought about giving up their rights again. Very similar to 9/11 except less casualties thankfully. Just an interesting observation of how much control screens can exert then vs now. More are connected with constant access. We need better screen diets.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hagibborim 6y ago

Along these lines, bad-faith actors can plan racist messages as a pretext for banning arbitrary communities

BitwiseFool 6y ago
There is a precedent for this, look at all the shenanigans r/AgainstHateSubreddits is known for.

esyir 6y ago

Private platforms, can't do shit about them, yada yada yada. That's bullshit. The principle, and thus the the right to free speech is the fundamental value of a free country. Hiding behind the "they're a private company, they can do what they want" is nonsense when the vast majority of communication flows through them. I'm wondering though what happens if section 230 was modified to only allow for filtering and removal of spam (I'm expecting wiggle here in how it's abused) and illegal content.

littlecranky67 6y ago
IANAL, but common misconception is that a constitution regulates the rights between individuals/citizens of that state. But this is wrong, the constitution regulates the rights of an individual against the state/government. That is, you have the freedom of speech against any government entities and cannot be prosecuted for exercising it. But if you come to my bar/house whatever and I don't like your opinion, I can show you the door and you can't quote the constitution and refuse to leave because you are exercising your rights.
- echelon 6y ago
  This sucks when there are only three or four bars and they all have the same corporate interest. Look at Visa going after porn and private sex work. This entire culture of trying to control what others can say via deplatformization is neoliberal fascism. Bad things get said. But free speech protects all of us from tyranny, and we have to defend it. Because they'll come after you and your ideas next. Americans have thick skin, or at least most of us do. It's a consequence of our liberty, and it's a defining trait of our system.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  Civil Liberties don't exist if you leave them to the public sector. The US Government hosts and produces virtually nothing on it's own and just about everything you interact with is run or produced by a corporation. If you leave the responsibility of Free Speech to the Free Market then you end up having freedom of press only for the people who own one.

paganel 6y ago

> be painted as trying to "incite" violence, They're using the "terrorist" word already in many cases.

sandworm101 6y ago

>> only tool left to common people is violence? I am genuinely interested in the physicality of how that would play out. A mob with pitchforks makes a run at a Facebook HQ. Do they kidnap employees until they find one with the access to re-initialize the account? I guess they would have to keep the hostages forever, else the accounts be disabled again the next day. Do they setup a camp outside with the declared intent to launch an attack should certain accounts not get enough likes? How long could that last? Or do they break into a datacenter and attempt to do it themselves? I'm reminded of that iMac scene in Zoolander.

DamnYuppie 6y ago
You are thinking to gentle and precise. Think more along the lines of setting data centers and office buildings on fire. Find anyone who has FB on a linked in profile, go their house, and burn it down. Let it all be known that it was an act of war and watch the insurance companies cover nothing.
bnjms 6y ago
I don’t want to be banned but... You are, I think, blessed to not be able to imagine violence. When someone says violence is an outcome the violence becomes the goal — not reinstating accounts... You don’t physically attack a DC you sever as many links in and out as possible.

crudgen 6y ago

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” ― Warren Buffett