Discord Takes Over Moderation Of r/WallStreetBets Server As Facebook Shuts Down Popular Stock Trading Group

from the everything-is-content-moderation dept

Apparently every damn story has a content moderation angle these days. The still ongoing GameStonks! story keeps getting more and more fascinating in all sorts of ways. Yesterday, we noted as a side note, that Discord had shut down the r/WallStreetBets server that many of the subreddit users had used to communicate. Discord claimed -- somewhat unbelievably -- that it had done so at this very moment because of a long term "hate speech" problem on that server.

But, then, a day later, Discord said it had re-enabled the server... but that the company itself was helping to moderate the server.

Discord staff are actively working with the server’s team to help with moderation. At least one Discord staffer, who is now in the new WallStreetBets server, is also helping with infrastructure problems related to the rapid growth the community is experiencing.

“WallStreetBets members have set up a new server and we are working with them,” says a Discord spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “We will welcome the group back so long as they improve their moderation practices and follow our Community Guidelines. We have reached out to the moderators to provide them with support and advice, like we do for many of our large communities.”

This is kind of fascinating. We've always been interested in moderation setups at places like Reddit and Discord, because they show a different overall structure than the kind of content moderation questions we're used to seeing at Facebook/Twitter/YouTube. In those latter cases, it's one company who just sets the rules. But with Reddit and Discord, while there are company-wide rules, since those services are made up of mostly individual communities, the moderation is effectively left up to those who run those communities (the mods on Reddit or the server owner/admins on Discord).

But, here, Discord is stepping in to help with the moderating. And it's interesting that the company claims that it has done this "for many of our large communities" as well. It appears to be something of a hybrid model, though that raises a bunch of other questions as well. Still, it's interesting to see how these things evolve. And, at least at a first pass, this new setup appears to be working better than the old one:

There are now fewer people screaming in calls, using racial slurs, or blasting music to the hundreds listening in. The memes are now mainly emoji and text, rather than images that often included offensive material.

Meanwhile, the Stonks! trading content moderation questions are spreading. Facebook announced that it has shut down a popular stock trading group... but for a reason you might not have expected:

Allen Tran, a 23-year-old from Chicago who created Robinhood Stock Traders, said he woke up on Wednesday to a notification that Facebook had disabled the 157,000-member group. The notification, seen by Reuters, said without detail that the group violated policies on “adult sexual exploitation.”

Wait... what? Tran notes that he cannot recall any "adult content" ever appearing in the group. It's possible that someone at Facebook clicked the wrong button or something, but it's still bizarre. And, at the very least, will contribute to the various conspiracy theories about big companies ganging up to shutdown retail investors who had suddenly found the loophole to make hedge fund folks sweat a little.

Filed Under: content moderation, stonks, wallstreetbets, wsb
Companies: discord, reddit

Robinhood App Decides To Stop Helping The Poor Steal From The Rich

from the everything-is-a-content-moderation-story dept

I had been meaning to do another story on the whole GameStop/Reddit/WallStreetBets story, because there's a lot of really fascinating points on this, but my original story got pretty much wiped away this morning when Robinhood, the popular stock trading app that promotes itself as a way of democratizing stock trading and providing free trades -- and which was the main app used by Redditors to drive up the prices of various stocks that a bunch of hedge funds were trying to short -- announced that it was blocking the trades in all of the volatile stocks that Redditors were driving up. It did so in the most ridiculous of statements, claiming that they were pausing buying of those stocks to "[help] our customers navigate this uncertainty."

Amid significant market volatility, it’s important as ever that we help customers stay informed. That’s why we’re committed to providing people with educational resources. We recently revamped and expanded Robinhood Learn to help people take advantage of the hundreds of financial resources we offer and educate themselves, including how to make sense of a volatile market. In 2020, more than 3.2 million people read our articles through Robinhood Learn.

We’re committed to helping our customers navigate this uncertainty. We fundamentally believe that everyone should have access to financial markets. We’re humbled to have helped many people invest in the markets for the first time. And we’re determined to provide new and experienced investors with the tools and resources to help them invest responsibly for their long-term financial futures.

Bull and Shit. The people buying into this stuff didn't need help "navigating this uncertainty." This was a protest. This actually was what happens when you "democratize finance" and stop letting the big giant firms abuse the system for profit. And it turns out that that's not what Robinhood really wanted after all.

As incredible as it seems, it turns out that even this is a content moderation story.

Also, I can pretty much guarantee that Robinhood is going to be hit with a whole bunch of class action lawsuits, probably before the day is out. (Actually, they were hit by lawsuits before even this post was out!)

Many people have recognized that while there's a lot going on here, at least some of what's happening is legitimately smaller individual investors giving a big giant "fuck you" to the big Wall Street hedge funds that were treating the market as a plaything with which to get ever richer. I heard someone jokingly note yesterday that Reddit and Robinhood together accounted for more wealth distribution from the rich to the poor in the past week than the Democratic Party has in years.

And, like every other time that gatekeepers' walls are knocked down, the gatekeepers freak out. This is Hollywood freaking out about Napster all over again. Yesterday the big news was that Discord banned the r/WallStreetBets server, which was where many of the Redditors were gathering (outside of Reddit). The company claimed -- somewhat ridiculously -- that the ban was for hate speech on the server. But the timing of it made that look like a very weak fig leaf. Considering how many gamers use Discord (its original target market), I can assure you that other servers have a lot more hate speech than the WallStreetBets one did.

Then, last night, we had the totally expected old school "Hollywood reacting to Napster" response when NASDAQ's CEO, Adena Friedman, said that they should halt trading in GameStop and the other targeted stocks to allow investors to "recalibrate their positions."

Funny how they never seem to do that when it's retail investors losing their investments.

As with other situations, the events of the past few days only serve to underline how the system itself is rigged to help the big guys on Wall Street, and the second that everyone else figures out how to game the system themselves, the gatekeepers freak out and look to reassert control.

Filed Under: content moderation, gatekeepers, hedge funds, retail investors, stonks, wallstreetbets
Companies: discord, gamestop, reddit, robinhood