(Sorry for the annoying repetition:) Large threads are paginated. To see all the comments, you'll need to click More at the bottom of each page, or do this sort of thing:
Okay so I completely agree but I want to add something to what’s going on
Half the fun of WSB is that it is enormously offensive. The foundation of the community is that a forum talking about stock investing strategies is, at its heart, really dumb. It’s harder than most people can manage to evaluate all the “DD” flying around and any advice other than playing it safe (r/investing) is stupid to take from a rando on a forum.
WSB’s culture is a reaction which embraces how stupid the exercise is, and then races to the bottom on rhetoric, which makes it all about meme irony. So they (excuse the language) call themselves “retards,” “degenerates,” and “autists” (again, their words). It sometimes gets more offensive from there, but they try to keep the insults self-targeted.
Generally speaking they’re pretty clever and witty in their behavior, but you know how this gets when it goes mainstream. Less clever people show up and attach to the “offensive” part without bringing along the “clever” part.
My general sense is that WSB works hard to moderate within its sensibility so it stays enjoyable, but with the big influx, I’d bet Facebook and Discord are either reacting to behavior which is slipping past the WSB mods due to the influxes, or they’re reacting to the aesthetic without understanding the underlying wit. Another side-effect of going mainstream: it becomes political, and politics is perception. Frankly though, I think most people would enjoy WSB culture right now, given the underdog narrative and the embrace of the irreverent.
If I were Facebook or Discord, I’d trust WSB mods to get things back under control and help them protect the community, not ban it. That said, I’d bet good money their reasons for banning are not evidence-free.
So the real question is, why aren’t these platforms helping WSB mods instead of banning the community.
When everyone is a criminal, anyone can be arrested. The reddit mods have basically made this charge, in their own special WSB way.
It's impossible for moderators to fully control large groups, subs and such. Some bannable comments will always be present, and they are limited by whatever moderation tools they get from reddit.
Meanwhile, the idea that discord, reddit (throttled not banned) and FB all simultaneously and coincidentally took these actions during the gamestop maneuver is not even 1% believable. WTF.
Actually, they can try to appeal to the new Facebook Oversight Board.[1] They released their first set of decisions today, overturning some Facebook removals.[2]
The slippery slope is in full effect. Platforms engaged in mass, coordinated de-platformings and people lapped it up because orange man bad. Now the orange man is gone, but the mass coordinated de-platformings still remain and are now being wielded for YOLO reasons.
I have been on wsb subreddit and discord server for a long time. There has been zero change in the culture or the type of content or the tone of the conversations in all that while, right uptill the discord server was banned. Either these platforms knew there was bad content but did nothing, or they know there is no bad content but are using it as a flimsy excuse to help out their fellow Harvard MBA's.
Ironically the orange man would be the one laughing at all of this today.
It's too bad the same doesn't apply to them. Like the Gov or someone coming along and saying that there is adult sexual exploitation going on on their platform, we're shutting you down and banning you.
Fuck I only wish....can you imagine how much healthier society would be without farcebook.
The issue is that in any group of sufficient size, someone at some point will use a slur or phrase that someone who is really reaching can turn into a claim like this. The excuse in WSB’s case with Discord was “hate speech”. This then overflowed into the Financial Times falsely labeling WSB as an “alt-right” group [1].
Unfortunately in today’s hyper-PC environment, this is such an easy way to instantly deplatform your enemies that it will continue to be abused. Any large group can be shutdown at any time should the powers that be decide they don’t like it - they just have to find a single post that the PC police would find objectionable. It’s one of the dangers of allowing such thin claims to have such instant, fatal effects with with no ability to fight or appeal.
As the saying goes, "if it's free, you're the product". And all of these de-platforming moves are in response to 'defective product'. The community they sell to advertisers is acting defective and becomes unsellable, thus that community is tossed out/shut down. Enough other communities remain manageable & sellable, so business continues on.
Why do they even pretend to give a reason anymore. Just close it. Nobody is buying the "hate speech" "adult sexual exploitation" whatever arguments, and honestly it just makes facebook look like liars.
Just delete the group and say: "It violated our terms of service". That's probably also a lie, but at least it's a little less obnoxious.
Or just delete it and be honest: "Our VP's rowing crew buddy from Harvard who now works at Citadel asked us to shut this down and he's more important than you."
The thing that gets me is that they don't ban specific people, it's always the entire community that gets taken down. But totally nothing to see here, guys.
If you manage a community that is even remotely controversial, you’d better start asking your community for their email address, as an emergency backup.
Possibly even ask for their phone number.
Though it's tempting, don't message them at all. Just hang onto it.
Only use it to if your community is banned and you need to start over somewhere else. Then email/text them the location of the new community.
No matter how they treat users, people won't leave due to network effect.
I don't believe the problem is solvable with more tech or free market. I think the only way forward is political, with laws and regulations.
Long ago railroad networks, water pipes networks, and landline phone networks were private companies free to do whatever they please with the property they own.
What? Facebook obviously isn’t a natural monopoly. WSB is mainly on reddit, was active on discord, and congregates elsewhere.
I don’t think Facebook should have shut down WSB but that doesn’t make them a monopoly.
As for monopoly in general, there’s Tiktok, Snapchat. Clubhouse just raised a big round.
The blue facebook app is actually anything but a monopoly, as Instagram (a facebook property) gets much more enthusiasm. There’s no “natural” monopoly for Facebook blue there.
It’s easy to pick a concept and try to apply it everywhere, but Facebook can act objectionally without being “a natural monopoly”.
It's much better to argue that FB is a monopoly than a natural monopoly. It's not at all obvious why FB cannot instantly die like all social media companies before. I'm not sure what inspiration is hoped by linking to Wikipedia on a fiercely discussed issue.
Agreeed. And there are several obvious laws without touching 230. Off the top of my head
- Ban businesses engaged in online advertising from compiling real world data / mixing physical world data with the online profiles of users
- Ban businesses engaged in online advertising from building profiles of people who have not opted into their platform; require permanent removal of all data within 30 days of any user leaving their platform
- Require businesses provide human based appeal process to any user or business that spends or earns $1,000 in a year before suspending or terminating an account
These could even be done at the state proposition level, absent state authority
> Long ago railroad networks, water pipes networks, and landline phone networks were private companies free to do whatever they please with the property they own.
I agree about social networks, but I'm not sure how good of an argument this is. In the US all those things (railroads, water networks, landline) have gone to crap.
> Facebook suspended his group on Jan. 7 after labeling it a “dangerous organization,” according to correspondence seen by Reuters, though the company reinstated its privileges after he appealed to contacts there.
What a joke. They're not even pretending to do it under the guise of hate speech anymore.
The big Internet challenge for the next 3-4 years is to completely decentralize the big social networks. It is not a matter of technology though. You need people rioting, the governments having the balls to do it or a combination of both.
I find it scary that those big tech companies are trying their best to put everything under their control. I understand that they are private companies. But does that mean they can do whatever they want and get away with it?
Depends on which argument you agree with. "It's a private company it can do whatever it wants" makes it seem like yes, they can. However Facebook is answerable to two distinct groups: The people who use the service, and the stock market. If people stopped using Facebook then it's possible that would push ad revenue down, which would then push the stock price down, which might then incite the investors to demand Facebook make changes to bring people back...so the ad revenue will go back up, which will push the stock price back up, and on and on. On the other hand, Facebook is a lot like Microsoft back in the 90s. It wasn't the only computer company. It wasn't the only operating system. But the sheer size and market influence allowed it to act unchecked.
Biggest question seems to be how does the community deal with spam (and spam taking a large amount of space). But other than that I could see a lot of people willing to host nodes for free.
It’s time to hack/weaponize censorship. Any group you don’t like you infiltrate and add hate speech. Like China when you denounced the neighbor you had a grudge with as bourgeoisie.
If you don’t think this isn’t already happening, you are completely wrong.
Frankly, this is a good thing. Maybe when those who were so sanguine about the recent censoring by Big Tech see it without the blinders of their political bias on, and also witness to the coordinates attacks by the media to justify it, the other Big Lie will be obvious to more people.
Quick question: is anything stopping GameStop itself from authorizing a whole bunch new shares and selling them at this all-time-high price? I understand the Redditors trust each other, but what makes them think they can trust GameStop?
I don't know much about all this gambling stuff and to be honest I don't care. But what happened and what is happening is, in my opinion, more important than this affair.
It shows where power is, in case we didn't notice yet.
And it shows that we should collectively act to regain some of this power, we gave them for free...
If people are wondering what other options there out there to protect WSB and other groups from obnoxious band like this, might I suggest Mastodon? You can self host and be a part of the network. The tricky part to replicate the user capacity for WSB would probably require a lot of build out and probably someplace the servers can’t be killed by the ISP or data center (Russia?).
I along with a few other friends have messaged the moderators and a few other notable figures on Reddit about this. Nobody has responded for obvious reasons.
Would like to see them continue doing what they’re doing outside the grasp of the money strings controlling politics and the economy.
That would be the state. It's a loose alliance between the corporations, media, government, and religion. They are generally content to try and gain control of the power structure under the guise of weakening one branch or the other, but they never actually attempt to weaken the whole system.
Having been on the internet a long time I can confidently say that WSB's "culture" is just old internet culture based on the descriptions in these threads. Metahumor and offensive words are nothing new. This confusing humor is alongside others like 4chan. When normal people see that kind of humor and culture they are immediately offended because it doesn't really match anything in reality. Normal people don't go around using those words that way unless they're 13. While it's possible an influx of new users drives up the number of people joining, thus creating a squeeze on the number of people learning to adapt to that culture and thusly carrying that humor too far, this is nothing out of the ordinary in the world other than that Facebook now deems those words hate speech (assuming what people are commenting on is what they got banned for.)
There are likely people on this forum who would reject that culture because of their ideals. Those words fit right into a category called "ableism" whether you use them for humor or not. You're not fighting some hedge companies paid troll machines or whatever else you can dream up. What's happening to WSBs is more tantamount to what happened to the internet and many small forums back in the late 2000s when Facebook and Twitter signed on millions of people who had never used the internet before. What you're fighting is people who want the internet to reflect reality.
Hopefully this serves as a wake up call to all those people who previously supported censorship. Up until now it has mostly been groups that are extremely difficult to defend because discussions around them always got mired in politics. Finally a relatively popular, apolitical community has been targeted.
Facebook has done it. Reddit is probably very close. In the future, we might rely on other channels of communication. At which point if a situation like this happens again, the ISPs will intervene instead. Disgusting on so many levels (Robinhood, Platforms (Facebook, Google, Discord)).
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
(Sorry for the annoying repetition:) Large threads are paginated. To see all the comments, you'll need to click More at the bottom of each page, or do this sort of thing:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25952659&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25952659&p=3
[+] [-] paxys|5 years ago|reply
That's some bullshit right there. Spin the wheel, come up with a random charge, and ban the entire community with zero recourse and no way to appeal.
[+] [-] pfraze|5 years ago|reply
Half the fun of WSB is that it is enormously offensive. The foundation of the community is that a forum talking about stock investing strategies is, at its heart, really dumb. It’s harder than most people can manage to evaluate all the “DD” flying around and any advice other than playing it safe (r/investing) is stupid to take from a rando on a forum.
WSB’s culture is a reaction which embraces how stupid the exercise is, and then races to the bottom on rhetoric, which makes it all about meme irony. So they (excuse the language) call themselves “retards,” “degenerates,” and “autists” (again, their words). It sometimes gets more offensive from there, but they try to keep the insults self-targeted.
Generally speaking they’re pretty clever and witty in their behavior, but you know how this gets when it goes mainstream. Less clever people show up and attach to the “offensive” part without bringing along the “clever” part.
My general sense is that WSB works hard to moderate within its sensibility so it stays enjoyable, but with the big influx, I’d bet Facebook and Discord are either reacting to behavior which is slipping past the WSB mods due to the influxes, or they’re reacting to the aesthetic without understanding the underlying wit. Another side-effect of going mainstream: it becomes political, and politics is perception. Frankly though, I think most people would enjoy WSB culture right now, given the underdog narrative and the embrace of the irreverent.
If I were Facebook or Discord, I’d trust WSB mods to get things back under control and help them protect the community, not ban it. That said, I’d bet good money their reasons for banning are not evidence-free.
So the real question is, why aren’t these platforms helping WSB mods instead of banning the community.
[+] [-] dalbasal|5 years ago|reply
It's impossible for moderators to fully control large groups, subs and such. Some bannable comments will always be present, and they are limited by whatever moderation tools they get from reddit.
Meanwhile, the idea that discord, reddit (throttled not banned) and FB all simultaneously and coincidentally took these actions during the gamestop maneuver is not even 1% believable. WTF.
[+] [-] tony101|5 years ago|reply
Actually, they can try to appeal to the new Facebook Oversight Board.[1] They released their first set of decisions today, overturning some Facebook removals.[2]
[1] https://oversightboard.com/appeals-process/
[2] https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/
More info: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961391277/facebook-supreme-co...
[+] [-] morlockabove|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quantummkv|5 years ago|reply
I have been on wsb subreddit and discord server for a long time. There has been zero change in the culture or the type of content or the tone of the conversations in all that while, right uptill the discord server was banned. Either these platforms knew there was bad content but did nothing, or they know there is no bad content but are using it as a flimsy excuse to help out their fellow Harvard MBA's.
Ironically the orange man would be the one laughing at all of this today.
[+] [-] hourislate|5 years ago|reply
Fuck I only wish....can you imagine how much healthier society would be without farcebook.
[+] [-] downandout|5 years ago|reply
Unfortunately in today’s hyper-PC environment, this is such an easy way to instantly deplatform your enemies that it will continue to be abused. Any large group can be shutdown at any time should the powers that be decide they don’t like it - they just have to find a single post that the PC police would find objectionable. It’s one of the dangers of allowing such thin claims to have such instant, fatal effects with with no ability to fight or appeal.
[1] https://twitter.com/wsbmod/status/1354720831218339845?s=21
[+] [-] kardianos|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danboarder|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dudul|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pylua|5 years ago|reply
My problem is that they bully small platforms but big platforms that also have huge problems with their users must be too big too fail.
They should probably just shut themselves down also because of the capitol riots.
Do the right thing facebook, shut yourself down.
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beaner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway8582|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris123|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] H_Pylori|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] TeeMassive|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rufus_foreman|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] WClayFerguson|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] blhack|5 years ago|reply
Just delete the group and say: "It violated our terms of service". That's probably also a lie, but at least it's a little less obnoxious.
[+] [-] ryandrake|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttt0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelApproved|5 years ago|reply
Possibly even ask for their phone number.
Though it's tempting, don't message them at all. Just hang onto it.
Only use it to if your community is banned and you need to start over somewhere else. Then email/text them the location of the new community.
[+] [-] pera|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Const-me|5 years ago|reply
No matter how they treat users, people won't leave due to network effect.
I don't believe the problem is solvable with more tech or free market. I think the only way forward is political, with laws and regulations.
Long ago railroad networks, water pipes networks, and landline phone networks were private companies free to do whatever they please with the property they own.
It's time to add social networks to the list.
[+] [-] graeme|5 years ago|reply
I don’t think Facebook should have shut down WSB but that doesn’t make them a monopoly.
As for monopoly in general, there’s Tiktok, Snapchat. Clubhouse just raised a big round.
The blue facebook app is actually anything but a monopoly, as Instagram (a facebook property) gets much more enthusiasm. There’s no “natural” monopoly for Facebook blue there.
It’s easy to pick a concept and try to apply it everywhere, but Facebook can act objectionally without being “a natural monopoly”.
[+] [-] threatofrain|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
[+] [-] snomad|5 years ago|reply
- Ban businesses engaged in online advertising from compiling real world data / mixing physical world data with the online profiles of users
- Ban businesses engaged in online advertising from building profiles of people who have not opted into their platform; require permanent removal of all data within 30 days of any user leaving their platform
- Require businesses provide human based appeal process to any user or business that spends or earns $1,000 in a year before suspending or terminating an account
These could even be done at the state proposition level, absent state authority
[+] [-] blahblahblogger|5 years ago|reply
I agree about social networks, but I'm not sure how good of an argument this is. In the US all those things (railroads, water networks, landline) have gone to crap.
[+] [-] jkewnfjkwnef|5 years ago|reply
What a joke. They're not even pretending to do it under the guise of hate speech anymore.
[+] [-] 22c|5 years ago|reply
Members of /r/TheDonald would likely disagree with this sentiment.
[+] [-] cambalache|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thisgoodlife|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Simulacra|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ketamine__|5 years ago|reply
Biggest question seems to be how does the community deal with spam (and spam taking a large amount of space). But other than that I could see a lot of people willing to host nodes for free.
[+] [-] babesh|5 years ago|reply
If you don’t think this isn’t already happening, you are completely wrong.
[+] [-] ctrlp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robbmorganf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephc_int13|5 years ago|reply
It shows where power is, in case we didn't notice yet. And it shows that we should collectively act to regain some of this power, we gave them for free...
[+] [-] someonehere|5 years ago|reply
I along with a few other friends have messaged the moderators and a few other notable figures on Reddit about this. Nobody has responded for obvious reasons.
Would like to see them continue doing what they’re doing outside the grasp of the money strings controlling politics and the economy.
[+] [-] fireeyed|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sleepytime|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ClumsyPilot|5 years ago|reply
Here the comments seem full of old chestnuts like 'it's a private company, they do what they want' and 'WSB is manupulating the market'
The reddit is actually discussing the core of the matter and their next steps.
[+] [-] kodah|5 years ago|reply
There are likely people on this forum who would reject that culture because of their ideals. Those words fit right into a category called "ableism" whether you use them for humor or not. You're not fighting some hedge companies paid troll machines or whatever else you can dream up. What's happening to WSBs is more tantamount to what happened to the internet and many small forums back in the late 2000s when Facebook and Twitter signed on millions of people who had never used the internet before. What you're fighting is people who want the internet to reflect reality.
[+] [-] null0pointer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GNU_James|5 years ago|reply
https://matrix.org/clients/
[+] [-] throw14082020|5 years ago|reply