(Bloomberg) – There seems to be a fight going on on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, and that’s not what the next GameStop Corp. is about.
Only a few weeks after the site was used to process an epic brief push on the video game maker’s shares, the real Wall Street was forced to reckon with the power of a united front of traders. member stock message board.
To say the least, it is an unconventional battlefield, one where online abstractions fit in with people, identity is dark and confirmation is often impossible. At the same time, the drama for Wall Street has become hard to ignore. By manipulating people in the forums whose only name on the internet is an internet screen, it can move tens of millions of dollars in stock.
While online skirmishes are not uncommon, of course, any cohesion among WallStreetBets’ loose group of coordinating presence breaks out a weakening in its power in the market. And as recent weeks have shown, this is news for day traders and investors.
Read more: SEC hunts for fraud in social media posts conceived by GameStop
First, some definitions. WallStreetBets is a quasi-independent message board hosted by Reddit, the site of the rare cutback in GameStop that took place this week. While someone who registers can apparently post there, some members are more equal than others: users known as moderators are the volunteer host of gatekeepers on the site. They sometimes monitor and delete messages – for example if the message is spam or violates the rules against harassment or share promotion.
In the past 24 hours, active moderators, those who applied the rules when GameStop mania swept the site, said their privileges had been revoked.
Who someone is on WSB – that is, what live person is behind a message – is often unknown, which means that descriptions of what is going on there are mostly just chronicles about the interaction of screen names on a website. While many moderators have been active long enough to establish a kind of personality via their messages, it is never entirely clear who is who. The risk of misrepresentation and burglary is always present.
The source of the current tension, according to reports claimed by the current moderators, is money – specifically the potential to make money if media interest revolves around the forum. WallStreetBets founder Jaime Rogozinski, who was kicked out of the forum last year, sold the rights to his life story for a ‘low six-figure’ payment to Brett Ratner’s RatPac Entertainment earlier this week, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Rogozinski did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to a message from WSB moderator ZJZ, a group of long – and long inactive – moderators have taken back police rights on the forum in an attempt to take advantage of the site.
“We were taken hostage by the top mods,” ZJZ wrote. “They left for years and came back when they smelled money.”
ZJZ’s post was deleted from WallStreetBets, but under the heading “Stop the Steal #FREEWSB” on another Reddit message board, a sub-edit known as wallstreetbet test, where many members have been gathering for a long time.
Other WallStreetBets moderators who have recently been fired have posted on wallstreetbet test that they have been removed from the main forum or that they have chosen to resign from their duties.
The moderators who were active until they started claim that the old WSB gatekeepers, who retained seniority privileges to remove more junior members from the group, essentially came back from the dead. The new startup programs have overseen the recent growth of the community and say they want it to stay the same – they do not want to make money from WSB by selling it or by exceeding spam.
Another former moderator, known under the screen name Jamsi, said he recalled his powers without a statement on Wednesday.
A page with WallStreetBets moderators no longer contains ZJZ or Jamsi. However, it shows that four new moderators were added within the last day. Three of the new moderators are accounts created since February 3rd.
ZJZ, Jamsi and Reddit did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Conspiracy theories, of course, also make the rounds. In a report on WallStreetBets, Jamsi suggests that the hedge fund boogeyman may be behind the uprising:
Meanwhile, users have flocked to splinter sites like wallstreetbetsOGs as the original site has been flooded with new members since GameStop shares skyrocketed. On the new website, which was created on January 29, the discussion of boards is heavy for stock analysis, as long as it is not about the now infamous video game retailer.
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