Stonks: Shortin' The Hedgefund - The Something Awful Forums

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Detective No. 27: Jun 7, 2006

Quick and dirty OP. Long story short, no pun intended, users of subreddit WallStreetBets have been buying Gamestop stocks. This has had the effect of driving up the stock price, which is bleeding out the vampires at Melvin Capital. They are also doing the same for AMC Theaters.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021...m_medium=social

quote:

Last week, an epic short squeeze had driven GameStop stock up to $40 a share, a roughly 1,500 percent increase from its low point nine months ago. Little did anyone know at the time that this would only be the beginning of the story.
As I write this, GameStop's stock price is hovering around $350, up another 775 percent or so since I wrote about this situation eight days ago. By the time you read this, that number may be horribly outdated, as the stock continues to bounce up and down with extreme volatility hour by hour (it dipped down as low as $61 and peaked as high as $159 on Friday).

The current stock price now gives the company a market cap of about $26 billion.

On the surface, that means the market currently thinks GameStop is worth more than twice as much now (during a potentially existential threat to brick and mortar game sales) as it was during the height of the Wii boom in late 2007, when console game downloads were barely a thing.

It's an understatement to say that nothing has changed about GameStop's fundamental business to justify such a quick and dramatic rise in valuation. But getting at what is causing the nearly vertical launch of GameStop's stock value is a little complicated.

A short lesson on shorts
To understand what's happening to GameStop stock, first you have to understand short selling, where investors make a bet that a stock will go down instead of up. To do this, they borrow a share of the stock (for a fee), immediately sell it to pocket the current value, and agree to buy another share later to "cover" their short position.

But shorting stocks comes with huge risks if the stock price goes up. When your short position eventually comes due, you're forced to buy the stock at whatever price the market currently sets, and there's theoretically no limit to how high it could go. If you invest $1,000 in buying a stock, all you can lose is $1,000. If you borrow $1,000 worth of stock to short it, you could lose a lot more than that when you're forced to buy much more expensive stock.

Investors as a whole were so sure that GameStop stock was going to go down that they wanted to borrow every single available share (and then some) to make money on the coming collapse.
When investors do lose money on a short position in this way, they often reborrow more short options at the new price to hedge their bet (if they expected the stock was overvalued before, it's probably even more overvalued now, right?). That "short squeeze" process can theoretically keep going until the stock price actually starts going down (perhaps because traditional "long" investors want to pocket their profits) or the short sellers run out of capital to keep borrowing.

GameStop has been one of the most heavily shorted stocks on the market for a while now. Since the middle of 2019, the "short interest" (i.e., the number of shares investors have expressed interest in borrowing for a short position) has heavily surpassed the stock's "free float" (i.e., the number of actively traded shares available). In other words, investors as a whole were so sure that GameStop stock was going to go down that they wanted to borrow every single available share (and then some) to make money on the coming collapse. And keep in mind, this phenomenon started when GameStop stock was already trading at historic lows of $5 a share or less.

FURTHER READING
Console options without disc drives could be GameStop’s final death knell
GameStop faces plenty of headwinds to its core business of selling disc-based games in brick-and-mortar stores (as we've written about extensively). But that extreme level of short interest in an already heavily depressed stock was probably overly pessimistic about the company's near-term prospects.
"They don't have net debt, so they're not going bankrupt or anything," Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter told Ars last week. "And with the new console launch, they're probably going to sell a lot of consoles and be fine."

As it turns out, a group of retail investors noticed this excess of pessimism and was poised to exploit it.

Enter the Redditor
The WallStreetBets subreddit (WSB) describes itself as "like 4chan found a Bloomberg terminal," and that's not a bad description. WSB is a generally disorganized mess of posters throwing up memes and slang that can be hard to parse for an outsider. At the center of it, though, are members who analyze the market for opportunities so they can try to rally the sub's millions of subscribers (2.9 million as of this writing) to a potential value play.

A few posters on WSB began to notice GameStop as a potentially undervalued and overshorted stock back in 2019, without too much wider action. But the group's attention began to crystallize around April 2020, when WSB member Senior_Hedgehog laid out what turned out to be a prescient case for "the biggest short squeeze of your entire life."

GameStop stock remained relatively flat in the months following that post. That changed in August, when Chewy.com founder Ryan Cohen bought a 9 percent stake in the company. Since then, Cohen has increased his stake in the company, earned control of three board seats, and promised to try to refocus the retailer into a more purely digital business.

"GameStop's challenges stem from internal intransigence and an unwillingness to rapidly embrace the digital economy," Cohen said in a November SEC filing. "If GameStop takes practical steps to cut its excessive real estate costs and hire the right talent, it will have the resources to begin building a powerful e-commerce platform that provides competitive pricing, broad gaming selection, fast shipping, and a truly high-touch experience that excites and delights customers."

The YOLO-riffic logo for r/WallStreetBets.
Enlarge / The YOLO-riffic logo for r/WallStreetBets.
Whether or not that transformation will be possible, the interest from the usually risk-averse Cohen was enough to get some investors to take another look at buying GameStop. The price started creeping up from $5 in the middle of August to nearly $20 by the end of the year. That put some pressure on all those short positions, but not enough to stop them from reborrowing and keeping short interest high.

On Reddit, meanwhile, the hype around the turnaround only got louder and louder as the stock price increased. Some WSB members (and others) posted lengthy analyses suggesting a "fair value" of $100 or more per share for GameStop based on expected earnings (analysts in aggregate suggest a much more modest $13.44 price target based on the fundamentals). Others take a more meme-centric, "for the lols" route, reminding their compatriots that "stocks only go up" and urging "diamond hands" (i.e., hands that never stop holding) and bitcoin-style HODL strategies as GameStop stock goes on a "rocket to the Moon." Some even encouraged GameStop stock owners to tell their brokers not to allow those shares to be borrowed for further short options, squeezing short borrowers even further (it's not clear how much effect this part of the effort has had, in aggregate).

Through it all, the WSB-ers have been able to coalesce around a vision of themselves as the "little guy" using cheap retail trading tools to fight against a common perceived enemy: massive hedge funds that were heavily shorting the stock. Citron Research founder Andrew Left, who's been publicly arguing for a $20 price target for GameStop, said last week he was targeted by a wave of harassment and attempted hacking ahead of a planned video arguing for the short position.

More recently, Melvin Capital Management has seen its value fall 30 percent this month, thanks in no small part to a heavy short position in GameStop. The hedge fund was forced to take a $2.75 billion cash infusion from Citadel to stay solvent in recent days. CNBC reports that Melvin finally closed out its short position Tuesday afternoon, i.e., taking a huge loss rather than redoubling on the short borrowing. But many WSB posters are publicly doubting that report and are confident they can literally bankrupt a massive hedge fund if the GameStop stock price goes high enough.

Is it legal? Is it repeatable?
As the role of WSB in driving up GameStop's price has become clearer, many are throwing around terms like "stock manipulation" and urging regulator action to look into this kind of ultrarapid stock inflation. Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin told Barron's that he's "concerned" about GameStop's stock movement, "because it suggests that there is something systematically wrong with the options trading on this stock." And the White House confirmed Wednesday afternoon that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is "monitoring the situation."

But bringing any sort of legal or regulatory action against a group of Redditors may not be so simple. The legal definition of stock manipulation involves a four-part test that includes actions "specifically intended to create or effect a price or price trend that does not reflect legitimate forces of supply and demand." In a usual pump-and-dump scheme, that means buying a stock and then putting out baseless rumors to encourage others to buy it, driving the price up based on faulty information (i.e., not "legitimate forces").

For the most part, that's not what's happening on WallStreetBets. The opinions on the site are all clearly based on hunches or publicly available information, and they don't cross the line into misstatements of fact. And there's nothing illegal about buying a stock just because you think it's fun or encouraging others to do the same.

"If you can actually catch people knowingly passing on fraudulent information, then that is clearly illegal,” Georgetown Finance Professor James Angel told Bloomberg. "If all they are doing is saying, 'hey I think this company is a good buy,' there's not a lot anybody can do about that."

This isn’t a hive mind with a clear leader focusing its attention like the Death Star.
So does that mean WallStreetBets just has magical control over the stock market now? Can the subreddit's millions of members effectively drive up the price of any stock they want just "for the lulz" and rake in the profits?

That's true in theory. But there's still a collective-action problem involved in convincing all the WSB players to follow a single lead and work in concert in this way. This isn't a hive mind with a clear leader focusing its attention like the Death Star. Proposed "bets" that aren't sufficiently convincing to the throng will either be passively ignored or actively bet against by a segment of the mob, muddying the waters.

The exception to this could be other stocks that are already heavily shorted. WallStreetBets has recently turned its collective attention to stock opportunities like AMC and Bed Bath & Beyond, using the same strategy of buying and holding to force those short sellers to raise the price by covering in the short term. And it seems to be working: Bed Bath & Beyond is up nearly 200 percent since the beginning of the year, while AMC's stock price has shot up 200 percent today (as of this writing)!

But there could be limits to how well this strategy can work. Relative short interest in Bed Bath & Beyond and AMC is much lower than for GameStop, meaning there's plenty of room for new short sellers to come in and wait out the price spikes to reap a profit. And AMC only recently avoided bankruptcy thanks to an emergency infusion of cash. If the company is forced to declare bankruptcy in the near future, all those recent gains could crater to zero very quickly.

How does this end?
As the WSB-driven hype for GameStop has continued in an almost self-perpetuating cycle, the short positions have continued to be squeezed, forced to buy at ever higher prices to cover and/or hedge their bets. Yet even today, short interest in the stock remains at about 140 percent of float, suggesting well-capitalized short sellers in aggregate aren't ready to throw in the towel yet.

Eventually, some short sellers will follow Melvin's reported lead and give up, cutting their losses and allowing fresher and better capitalized short sellers to get in at a much more favorable position (i.e., starting the short selling ride at the current inflated price) to wait out the spikes. As the stratospheric gains start to slow (or even before then), some "long" investors will see their opportunity to cash out, depressing the price and causing a rapid descent back to reality as retail investors realize that stocks do, in fact, sometimes go down.

When that happens, a lot of late-comers who jumped in for this wild ride will no doubt be left holding the bag, unable to liquidate additional positions made at or near the peak of a highly irrational market. Precisely when that will happen, though, is still anyone's guess. Until then, even spectators can gawk at numbers that just keep going up... until they don't.

This is a developing saga.

EDIT: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY FINANCIAL LOSSES INCURRED IF ANY YA'LL BUY ANY STOCKS.

Detective No. 27 fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jan 27, 2021

# ? Jan 27, 2021 20:21

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# ? Mar 6, 2021 13:39

sigher: Apr 22, 2008; Down the Rabbit Hole.

I've heard that some have dumped their whole life savings into this and come out millionaires. I know gently caress-all about stocks and the market, but that owns for anyone that came out on top. Is there any downside for them?

# ? Jan 27, 2021 20:31

BexGu: Jan 9, 2004; This fucking day....

Taking that massive bet at first was really the risk. I guess if some government fuckery happens and Melvin Capital doesn't end up paying?

People are already using the profits from selling a bit of their stock to help pay off college debt, family medical bills, and Investor Chamath Palihapitiya will donate his earnings from GameStop's rally to the Barstool Fund, which supports struggling small businesses

The whole thing is turning into a massive gently caress YOU to WallStreet.

# ? Jan 27, 2021 20:36

Detective No. 27: Jun 7, 2006

There's a good chance that Biden will take action on this before he sends out those $2000 survival checks he promised. Capitol is the only thing that the government cares about helping.

# ? Jan 27, 2021 20:50

BexGu: Jan 9, 2004; This fucking day....

Lol, I want to be the fly on the wall as some one tries to explain to Biden's dementia mind what the hell is going on.

# ? Jan 27, 2021 20:52

Pierson: Oct 31, 2004; College Slice

sigher posted:

I've heard that some have dumped their whole life savings into this and come out millionaires. I know gently caress-all about stocks and the market, but that owns for anyone that came out on top. Is there any downside for them?

The stock is massively overvalued at this point so the big risk for wallstreetbets/retail investors (i.e. us schlubs) is that eventually it will have been pumped as much as it can be and then this circus will end. At that point the stock will almost certainly plummet since Gamestop isn't actually in a great place and if you bought at the wrong time or waited too long to sell you will lose it all.

The good news is since you just bought it normally and didn't sell at the right time all you can lose is your initial investment! Good job you didn't short it when it was cheap and lose billions! Hahahahahahahaaaaaaa!

# ? Jan 27, 2021 20:52

Centzon Totochtin: Jan 2, 2009

Seems like these fellas over at reddit are bonkers for stonkers

# ? Jan 27, 2021 20:56

Dr Pepper: Feb 4, 2012; Don't like it? well...

Detective No. 27 posted:

There's a good chance that Biden will take action on this before he sends out those $2000 survival checks he promised. Capitol is the only thing that the government cares about helping.

This is going to be the excuse for not sending out any checks.

"Americans got more than enough money from the stock market"

# ? Jan 27, 2021 20:57

Paracelsus: Apr 5, 2009; bless this post ~kya

As far as I understand it, Melvin left their rear end hanging in the breeze by shorting 136% of the actual outstanding shares of GME, a position that leaves you incredibly exposed to even small increases in demand for the stock. They are now calling for regulations to prevent anyone who isn't already in the club from being able to yell that Melvin's rear end is exposed and begging for a swing from a rat tail.

# ? Jan 27, 2021 21:46

Detective No. 27: Jun 7, 2006

Suddenly they want regulations

# ? Jan 27, 2021 21:47

BexGu: Jan 9, 2004; This fucking day....

I love how everyone on TV has to jump around DeepFuckingValue name

The consciences of the subreddit seems to be "If he's Holding, I'm Holding".

# ? Jan 27, 2021 21:56

BeanpolePeckerwood: May 4, 2004; BUT SATAN'S BOY
I COULD NEVER BE!; Pork Pro

looking forward to further developments

# ? Jan 27, 2021 22:23

Unlucky7: Jul 11, 2006; Don't worry my friends. I will be your shield.; Fallen Rib

I see a couple of people on my feed trying to get in on it. I am tempted but I know nothing about stonks, and I do not want to end up on the wrong end of the deal, so to speak.

What is hilarious is all these economists clutching their pearls and going "STOP LAUGHING THIS IS SERIOUS"

https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1354197191984746496

Unlucky7 fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jan 27, 2021

# ? Jan 27, 2021 22:36

Paracelsus: Apr 5, 2009; bless this post ~kya

If you get in now, you're on the wrong end. The time to buy was probably a week ago.

# ? Jan 27, 2021 22:50

Womyn Capote: Jul 5, 2004

Paracelsus posted:

If you get in now, you're on the wrong end. The time to buy was probably a week ago.

thats what goons said about bitcoins when they were 5 cents each

# ? Jan 27, 2021 23:05

BexGu: Jan 9, 2004; This fucking day....

I mean....its a bet. Now its a bet that if you hold you get to really screw over a wall street firm but still a bet.

# ? Jan 27, 2021 23:09

Detective No. 27: Jun 7, 2006

Edit: I need to look closer at things.

# ? Jan 27, 2021 23:27

Paracelsus: Apr 5, 2009; bless this post ~kya

Womyn Capote posted:

thats what goons said about bitcoins when they were 5 cents each

I think there's a decent argument it was undervalued at $20. It's sitting at around $290 in after-hours trading, down from a close of $347. The calls are on Friday, if I understand correctly, and now everyone is aware of what is going on.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 00:11

BexGu: Jan 9, 2004; This fucking day....

Its doesn't help that that WallStreetBets Discord has been banned and the sub has been set to private. But yeah, the gov/wallstreet is starting to notice what is going on.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 00:25

Tenacious J: Nov 20, 2002

WSB is back now. The show is not over.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 00:59

Crazy Joe Wilson: Jul 4, 2007; Justifiably Mad!

It's funny watching Wall Street cry when other people play their game and use their crazy rules to mess them up.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 01:49

Cobalt-60: Oct 11, 2016; Over time, random factors add up. What is chaos in the moment becomes systemic over time and space. As data accumulates, a pattern emerges.

I wonder what this will go into the economics textbooks as.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 04:23

GreatGreen: Jul 3, 2007; THIS IS HOW YOU REMIND ME OF WHAT I REALLY AM
*stumbles on reload and dies to a Nightstalker Super during Quick Play*

As somebody who knows basically nothing about stocks... is it possible to short Gamestop now that the stocks are astronomically overvalued, the idea being they will almost certainly fall back hard because of what a poo poo company Gamestop is?

GreatGreen fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jan 28, 2021

# ? Jan 28, 2021 04:38

Mister Facetious: Apr 21, 2007; You're Goddamned right I support Medicare for all.

Cobalt-60 posted:

I wonder what this will go into the economics textbooks as.

A non-violent rebellion.

It's not a pump and dump, since the growth is literally speculation that it will go up (albeit with the original instigator giving well reasoned arguments for Gamestop being highly undervalued), and not based on false information.
It's not insider trading, as the reddit and discord are public, the release of next gen consoles was known over a year in advance, and with no outstanding debt, Gamestop's survival into the new year was a given, even with many physical locations being closed.
It's not harassment, as you can't target specific hedgefunds' short positions, merely go long against all of them.

Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Jan 28, 2021

# ? Jan 28, 2021 04:39

Endorph: Jul 22, 2009; I may not be as cute as the other girls, but I'm the best at arm wrestling!

Mister Facetious posted:

A non-violent rebellion.

It's not a pump and dump, since the growth is literally speculation that it will go up (albeit with the original instigator giving well reasoned arguments for Gamestop being highly undervalued), and not based on false information.
It's not insider trading, as the reddit and discord are public, the release of next gen consoles was known over a year in advance, and with no outstanding debt, Gamestop's survival into the new year was a given, even with many physical locations being closed.
It's not harassment, as you can't target specific hedgefunds' short positions, merely go long against all of them.

it made two extremely rich guys lose money and be embarrassed so itll be illegal somehow

# ? Jan 28, 2021 04:46

Protagorean: May 19, 2013; "I could learn a thing or two about posting from the majestic sloth."

the stock market is like a giant casino and trading is just a betting game so I'll give you a temp pass OP, though you really should have posted in trad games

# ? Jan 28, 2021 04:48

Mister Facetious: Apr 21, 2007; You're Goddamned right I support Medicare for all.

Endorph posted:

it made two extremely rich guys lose money and be embarrassed so itll be illegal somehow

"Domestic terrorism"

* jazz hands *

"Conspiracy to introduce Communist/Socialist/Democratic practices to Capitalism"

Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Jan 28, 2021

# ? Jan 28, 2021 04:49

threelemmings: Dec 4, 2007; A jellyfish!

GreatGreen posted:

As somebody who knows basically nothing about stocks... is it possible to short Gamestop now that the stocks are astronomically overvalued, the idea being they will almost certainly fall back hard because of what a poo poo company Gamestop is?

It absolutely is, and in the abstract it's a great idea because there's no way Gamestop is actually worth 350-400 whatever it's going for now. But you risk being hit with the same type of short squeeze that got the hedge fund in trouble. Like, let's say we can guarantee the actual price is like 5 bucks and we know 100% won't stay above 300 dollars and buy in at that price. The question becomes how long does that drop actually take? And if the price jumps to 400 tomorrow before dropping, you better have 100 bucks per share to maintain your short, otherwise the brokerage will liquidate your shares and sell them at 400 to buyers and you owe 100 per share. But if you can maintain and the price drops back down to 50? You just made 250 per share.

Especially when things are this volatile, the rule is "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." It doesn't matter that you were right and the price drops down to five bucks, all the insanity that happens in between will bankrupt you. And while stocks can drop to zero they don't become negative so you "only" lose everything you put in. Stocks can go up infinitely so there's technically no ceiling to the amount of money you could lose when shorting. The price could go to 500, 800, 1000.

threelemmings fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Jan 28, 2021

# ? Jan 28, 2021 05:03

Wamdoodle: May 15, 2007; Yes, it is what it looks like!; Grimey Drawer

Rule of stock trading is the same as gambling. Only put in what you are willing to lose. You have to be comfortable with the fact that whatever you put in can just vanish like a fart in the wind and jfc don't short a stock unless you live, eat and breathe this crap. Oh and if someone says it's nothing like gambling, bullshit it is exactly like gambling except you don't even get the satisfaction of hearing the clack of casino chips.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 05:57

Acerbatus: Jun 26, 2020; Go ahead and pull the trigger, I'll never stop being a troll

Endorph posted:

it made two extremely rich guys lose money and be embarrassed so itll be illegal somehow

Attempting to regulate the stock market would cause a lot of even richer people to bring down the goddamn apocalypse.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 06:40

KillHour: Oct 28, 2007

GreatGreen posted:

As somebody who knows basically nothing about stocks... is it possible to short Gamestop now that the stocks are astronomically overvalued, the idea being they will almost certainly fall back hard because of what a poo poo company Gamestop is?

You'd have to find someone willing to take that position - i.e., bet against you. Then you have the problem of either being stuck with worthless stocks at the end of the day or taking a huge risk on a naked short for a tiny profit upside.

Edit: if you're not familiar with a naked short, it's like trying to sell a house you're renting from someone. If anyone calls your bluff, the only way you could possibly fulfill the contract is to buy the house from the person you're renting it from - at a much higher price than you sold it for.

KillHour fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Jan 28, 2021

# ? Jan 28, 2021 06:52

Joink: Jan 8, 2004; What if I told you cod is no longer a fish

With American Stimmy checks coming in hot, the dumb money will keep on flowing into the markets. Same thing happened last year.

GreatGreen posted:

As somebody who knows basically nothing about stocks... is it possible to short Gamestop now that the stocks are astronomically overvalued, the idea being they will almost certainly fall back hard because of what a poo poo company Gamestop is?

Of course you can. Long as their's shares available from your broker you can short as much as you want.

Joink fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Jan 28, 2021

# ? Jan 28, 2021 07:19

ErrEff: Feb 13, 2012; Have you heard the good news?

Look deeply into my eyes.

STADIA!

BexGu posted:

I love how everyone on TV has to jump around DeepFuckingValue name

The consciences of the subreddit seems to be "If he's Holding, I'm Holding".

Didn't DeepFuckingValue start with 100 thousand dollars or something as an initial investment?

Like, it's ridiculous and insane that such a sum could be grown to 47+ million using a single stock (not realized into cash yet AFAIK), but if they had that amount of seed money ready to gamble with, they weren't exactly what I'd call poor.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 07:37

Joink: Jan 8, 2004; What if I told you cod is no longer a fish

ErrEff posted:

Didn't DeepFuckingValue start with 100 thousand dollars or something as an initial investment?

Like, it's ridiculous and insane that such a sum could be grown to 47+ million using a single stock (not realized into cash yet AFAIK), but if they had that amount of seed money ready to gamble with, they weren't exactly what I'd call poor.

People are making huge sums of money. Look at the $200 strike expiring Jan 29th. Yesterday, Jan 26th it could be bought for a low of $1.68. Today it hit a high of $198. It's not even expiry day yet.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 08:13

sdr782: Jun 6, 2005; "I said it was dodgeball time, bitch."

ErrEff posted:

Didn't DeepFuckingValue start with 100 thousand dollars or something as an initial investment?

Like, it's ridiculous and insane that such a sum could be grown to 47+ million using a single stock (not realized into cash yet AFAIK), but if they had that amount of seed money ready to gamble with, they weren't exactly what I'd call poor.

I think he started with 50,000, so he definitely is not poor although WSB is infamous for idiots blowing their life savings on a stock and posting the massive gain/loss.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 13:29

Mordja: Apr 26, 2014; Hell Gem

Apparently Discord closed the server for "hateful speech" which is the biggest "suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure" I've seen in a while.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 13:30

bows1: May 16, 2004; Chill, whale, chill

Robinhood blocked all trading of meme stocks and its gettin' wild out there

# ? Jan 28, 2021 13:49

CottonWolf: Jul 20, 2012; Good ideas generator

But the secret is that all stocks are meme stocks.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 14:00

BexGu: Jan 9, 2004; This fucking day....

Mordja posted:

Apparently Discord closed the server for "hateful speech" which is the biggest "suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure" I've seen in a while.

I can;t tell if GoG removing Devolution cause of the outcry of the "The Gamers" is a bigger bold face lie then Discord but they are sure neck and neck.

Like the discord had bots and everything to remove poo poo for a 250K plus channel but apparently it took some one using unicode icelandic and screen shotting it to get shutdown.

quote:

We have grown to the kind of size we only dreamed of in the time it takes to get a bad nights sleep. We've got so many comments and submissions that we can't possibly even read them all, let alone act on them as moderators. We wrote software to do most of the moderation for us but that software isn't allowed to read the Reddit new feed fast enough and submit responses, and the admins haven't given us special access despite asking for it.

We're suffering from success and our Discord was the first casualty. You know as well as I do that if you gather 250k people in one spot someone is going to say something that makes you look bad. That room was golden and the people that run it are awesome. We blocked all bad words with a bot, which should be enough, but apparently if someone can say a bad word with weird unicode icelandic characters and someone can screenshot it you don't get to hang out with your friends anymore. Discord did us dirty and I am not impressed with them destroying our community instead of stepping in with the wrench we may have needed to fix things, especially after we got over 1,000 server boosts. That is pretty unethical.

To add to this, people are co-opting our name on twitter. I won't mention their accounts, but lots of handles with "wsb" and "wallstreetbets" in them are pretending to speak for us. They're saying things that we don't agree with, driving traffic to derivative communities and lovely pixelated merch stores, and generally making it harder for us to define who we are. There's also too much political bullshit in a community that was never ever political. The only way I want to occupy Wall St is in a suit myself or rent-free in the mind of a blown up short.

That is why I'm throwing my support behind the Twitter handle in general. We need a way to PUBLICLY reach out to the staff of the infrastructure that is failing us so the world can see that we aren't doing anything wrong here if they don't respond. We need to be able to respond directly to a reporter that is lying to the world about our clubhouse. We can't be expected to meet any expectations when we aren't given the tools we need.

That's not to say I approve of every message or will even be in the loop for all of them, but it's clear to me we can't do nothing and we need a megaphone.

http://twitter.com/wsbmod aka @wsbmod is the only Twitter handle whose statements are directly from some part of the team.

We'll do our best not to pretend to speak for you, but to try to speak with the volume our name now seems to command to get poo poo done for us.

The WSB Mods are holding strong but Christ the longer this goes on the longer more and more people are gonna see the bold face lie of the market. A bunch of manic's a subreddit might actually do more damage then OWS.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 14:58

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# ? Mar 6, 2021 13:39

The Gadfly: Sep 23, 2012

They're just mad that neckbeards are getting rich from playing with money like they do. The difference is that hedge fund managers get rich from playing with other people's money as well.

# ? Jan 28, 2021 15:51

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