After making waves this week for going head to head with hedge funds, the WallStreetBets community is now inaccessible. Today, the WallStreetBets Discord was banned, and shortly afterward, it appears that the /r/WallStreetBets subreddit went private.
Why was the WallStreetBets Discord banned?
According to The Verge, a statement from Discord explained that the WallStreetBets server had been banned due to repeated violations of the community guidelines. According to the release, Admins had warned the WallStreetBets Discord owner repeatedly about hateful and discriminatory content that had been posted to the server.
Discord says that the server wasn’t banned due to the recent coordinated buying of GameStop stock. It stated that WallStreetBets had been on its Trust & Safety team’s radar for an extended amount of time and lack of action on the server owner’s part is what resulted in the ban.
Why did the /r/WallStreetBets subreddit go private?
The WallStreetBets subreddit went private shortly after the Discord was banned. The subreddit mods previously stated that bots had been steadily posting misleading info and hate speech at an increasing rate over the last few days. Taking the subreddit private is likely a measure to prevent trolls and bots from drowning out those there to ride the GME train.
The message on the subreddit currently reads:
“We are experiencing technical difficulties based on unprecedented scale as a result of the newfound interest in WSB. We are unable to ensure Reddit’s content policy and the WSB rules are enforceable without a technology platform that can support automation of this enforcement. WSB will be back.”
Given that hundreds of thousands of users have joined the subreddit in the wake of the news coverage of WallStreetBets, the mod team is likely at its wit’s end. GME is down today in after-hours trading, which isn’t unusual. However, it’s not in a freefall, so the hype train may still be on track even if WallStreetBets is inaccessible.
