Late Wednesday, a moderator of the popular Reddit message board WallStreetBets posted several screenshots on the chat program Discord. They showed that other moderators had quietly started talking to each other about landing a movie deal.
“What’s our track?” asked one of the moderators according to the screenshots in a Discord chat.
By Thursday morning, the search for Hollywood wealth exploded into an ugly battle, giving a glimpse into the rebellious nature of a suddenly famous Reddit community.
That was when the WallStreetBets moderators considering the film deal started moderating other moderators they interviewed because they were secretly trying to take advantage of the forum’s success. Eventually, employees at Reddit weighed in trying to quell the unrest.
“Can you all discuss with me what’s going on?” asked a Reddit employee with the screen name sodypop, according to screenshots of the conversation shared with The New York Times.
The WallStreetBets battle is the latest twist in the saga of an online army of investors that has ravaged Wall Street for the past ten days. Driven by messages on the message board, where participants encouraged each other to buy the stock from video game retailer GameStop, the company’s shares were running exceptionally hard. The market frenzy captured hedge funds sitting against GameStop’s stock, a populist move that quickly captured the imagination.
GameStop’s shares have been in shock ever since. On Thursday, the stock fell 42 percent.
The chaos has put a spotlight on WallStreetBets, which has been on Reddit since 2012 and uses millions to trade tips and talk about specific investments. After the GameStop mania started last month, millions more have joined the message board. At one point, the forum’s settings were set to private – meaning that posts could not be seen in public – because it was so overwhelmed by the flood of attention.
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By Thursday afternoon, WallStreetBets had more than 8.5 million members, the vast majority of whom joined in the wake of GameStop.
“It’s definitely big,” said Nick Cormier, 35, a Los Angeles resident who has been a regular on WallStreetBets for the past four years, about the influx of new users and attention. “The amount was even astronomical last week.”
Moderators, who manage the day-to-day management of the online community, are central to all Reddit boards. On a voluntary basis, they look through thousands of comments, call users who break the rules, and set up guidelines. Some moderators also build custom technology, such as automated bots, to make the group work smoother. The number of WallStreetBets moderators has changed over time, but there have been a few dozen in recent weeks.
Reddit did not immediately comment.
WallStreetBets was founded in 2012 by Jaime Rogozinski (39), an information technology consultant in Mexico City.
“I was looking for a community, a place where people could talk about high-risk transactions in an unapologetic way, so that people could earn short-term money with disposable income,” he said. TMZ last month.
But early last year, Mr. Rogozinski struggled to stay in control. He became embroiled in ties with a trading group that sponsored an event for the message board, leading to accusations of insider trading and biased stock promotion. Last April, Mr. Expelled Rogozinski and his allies into the community.
Now WallStreetBets is struggling to deal with the sudden publicity over the GameStop saga.
Over the past week, several top moderators, who have administrative control over the message board, met in a private chat room on Discord to discuss the business opportunities arising from their sudden fame.
One moderator said he was in contact with Ben Mezrich, an author of the book that became the film “The Social Network”, who last week received an offer to write a book and help with a film about the GameStop saga, according to screenshots from the forum shared with The Times.
“Oof we need to go fast I think,” wrote another moderator. “While the studios compete.”
None of the six moderators interviewed by the Times were willing to give their real names, but The Times confirmed that the people had control over the board’s moderator accounts.
The conversation heated up after Mr. Rogozinski announced that he had sold the rights to his own story to a film studio this week. Mr. Rogozinski did not respond to requests for comment.
One year long moderator of the group, known as zjz, saw and addressed the conversation. He posted images of the conversation in a wider chat room for all the moderators.
“We suddenly find out that these previously inactive moderators are * trying * to sell the story of how they built the subreddit and undermine us,” zjz wrote in an email to The Times.
In a message on WallStreetBets Wednesday night, which was quickly removed, zjz also writes: ‘We have been taken hostage by the best mods. They left for years and came back when they smelled money. ”
This has led to increasing accusations and insults that will soon go beyond a film deal. Some have started criticizing the top moderators for the moves they have made to boost their profile, such as creating a Twitter account and appointing a PR representative. Some also made death threats.
Late Wednesday and early Thursday, the top moderators began removing lower-ranking moderators who asked questions.
When they are on their new Twitter account, the top moderators said they want to sign a film deal but plan to give any proceeds to charity.
“They’re trying to make it look like we’re grabbing cash is so dishonest,” the moderators wrote.
The top moderators said the struggle was also rooted in their desire to modernize the board, given all the new people who started using it. Opposite moderators like zjz, they said, wanted to retain the more homemade feel of what WallStreetBets was.
“It was his life’s work and he’s afraid it will change substantially,” the moderator said.
On this the two sides were at least aligned.
“It was our clubhouse with all our friends where we let go and was honest in being in it for the money, but not in selling something to each other,” zjz wrote in an email.
On Thursday afternoon, Reddit stepped in to remove the top WallStreetBets moderators. They regained control of the moderators who sat on the side of zjz, although zjz himself was not restored.
Mr. Cormier, who has been unemployed since March when he lost his job at a store specializing in the game Magic the Gathering, said he was upset about the fights on WallStreetBets.
He was afraid that the forum would shatter, making it almost impossible to launch the kind of coordinated effort that caused such a spectacular response to the market last week.
“If they kill WallStreetBets, it’s going to be very difficult to restart this attempt,” he said.