Ryan Cohen is the executive chairman of GameStop and is also obviously somewhat of a celebrity among GME (and also BBBYQ) investors.
In the before times, it went without saying that anything at all that RC said or did or something that he was mentioned in, was relevant to the interests of GME investors on Superstonk and in other communities, and therefore had merit to be posted in the subreddit.
Reasonably you would think, therefore, that any tweet, or any “like” on Twitter / X that RC does is something that is relevant to GME investors on superstonk and merits being posted there and merits being discussed by those that want to discuss it.
Superstonk mods clearly don’t see things this way. They have a long list of rules to choose from that allow them to remove a variety of content that they don’t like for some reason.
A ton of content is posted on superstonk every day that is not explicitly related to GameStop. But their rule 2 says that “Posts & Comments: Must be relevant to GME”, and this rule is used in any instance where something is not relevant to GME and the mods want to get rid of it. If there is something that is not related to GME, e.g. Evergrande, or many other subjects, the content typically does not get removed.
But if the content in any way shape or form related to BBBY, suddenly it is naughty and gets removed.
RC recently liked a generic tweet that Pulte made. RC, the executive chairman of GameStop “liked” something on Twitter. This is relevant to the interests of GME investors on superstonk and elsewhere.
But the post was removed by the mods for breaking rule 2: not related to GME. The online activity of the executive chairman of GameStop is not relevant to GME.
Another post was made, this time it wasn’t removed, but it was locked.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/16q9imu/rcs_latest_like/
The post was locked because, apparently, “some of the commenters decided to break Rules 1, 3, 5 and 8.”
“This post has been identified as being brigaded from outside of this subreddit and actions have been taken where needed.”
“This post is locked to prevent further “shilling” of other stocks, potential brigading of other subs due to attempts to redirect Superstonk traffic and rude/insulting behaviour.”
“For those of you that engaged in good faith and are just enjoying the weekend vibe I apologise for this interruption and hope you’re having a great time! 💜”
Damn, that’s a lot of rule breaking. Good thing the mods were there to put a stop to all that rule breaking and all of that bad faith discussion and shilling of other stocks.
The truth is that the mods have clearly demonstrated through their actions that they don’t want anyone talking about anything at all related to BBBY, even if it is Ryan Cohen himself.
There was the time they temporarily censored discussions about WSJ reporting that RC was under investigation by the SEC, for the time that he sold his shares of BBBY. They later backtracked about this one claiming that it was an honest mistake.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/16crwx2/wsj_news_exclusive_sec_probes_ryan_cohens_bed/
There was the time that, in a discussion about RC buying shares of Nordstrom, that a mod on superstonk pinned a post to the top of the discussion stating: “RC’s buys are not your buys. Only one stock is the play.” “Keep in mind that RC got out of towel leaving a lot of tin-foil theories and why he did and causing plenty of dual investing apes holding the bags of a company that is heading towards bankruptcy at full speed.”
There was also that time on September 17 when somebody in superstonk posted a thread called “Consider this. a business structure called Keiretsu”
Post was removed by mods, stating: “Please take your thinly veiled bbbyq chatter elsewhere”, removed for rule 2, not related to GME.
What has been demonstrated by the mods of that subreddit is a pattern of persistent censorship of any discussions at all that so much as hints at anything at all about Bed Bath and Beyond, spanning over nearly a year, even if the source of the discussion comes from the executive chairman of GameStop himself.
Many things get posted to superstonk all the time that are not even remotely related to GME, that don’t end up getting removed. But if something that GME investors want to discuss gets posted there that happens to be even loosely relate to Bed Bath and Beyond, it gets removed, even if it relates back to GameStop or Ryan Cohen.
If, in the not so distant future, Bed Bath and Beyond emerges successfully from their bankruptcy as many speculate will happen, and transforms into Teddy or anything like that, and if Ryan Cohen is one of the primary individuals behind all of this, then this pattern of censorship will be evidence that superstonk mods have been proactively trying to prevent GME investors in “their” subreddit from giving any attention at all to this particular narrative, and to the benefit of who?
Put another way, if BBBYQ, a stock in the basket of naked shorted stocks, was a vulnerable spot for the short hedge funds, and if Ryan Cohen was planning some action on that company that would cause the stock price to go up, what kind of actions on social media would be beneficial for the short hedge funds that wouldn’t want investors purchasing BBBYQ?
Going to attempt some devil’s advocate-ing here.
Reddit admins have imposed a lot of law and order on the superstonk sub. There was a very precarious period where it was at risk of being shut down. This is where these tightly-defined rulesets emerged from. Considering how the media goes overboard portraying the ‘ape movement’ as a sinister collective attempting to deliberately influence stocks (which is insane, we just buy and hold, and share information about how the stock market sausage is made)… what you’re reading as censorship may be a desperate attempt not to be shutdown, or give fire to media spin. Or, another explanation could be that they care as much about RC being slandered, and have made a collective decision that discussion of BBBY is giving ammo to regulators / hostile actors trying to claim RC did something wrong.
Another explanation… they have decided no BBBY talk, so anything tangentially related to BBBY gets caught up in the dragnet. “Post BBBY-related info on the BBBY subreddit” doesn’t seem unreasonable to me, though I fully understand it’s very frustrating having a post removed.
Or they could be nasty shills trying to suppress info. Personally I lean towards another explanation.
I would like to agree with you, I would like to believe that all of it is honest behavior done in good faith, and this is what I used to believe. But I have a very hard time continuing to believing that. It has been a pattern of censorship and subjugation of the community. The subreddit used to be a place where GME investors could shitpost about whatever, speculate about whatever, and now there are so many rules and restrictions and simply a culture of censorship.
Engagement is way down in that subreddit, and there might be many contributing factors as to why that is, but I believe one big reason is because of the behavior of the mods. We could blame Reddit, and not the mods, for threatening to shut down the subreddit, but lately I’ve started to feel as if those threats from Reddit were a bluff, used as a justification by those mods to clamp down on the subreddit and destroy the engagement, to destroy the culture of it. Because, who would benefit the most if superstonk were to suffer a slow and miserable death, and GME investors lost their main hangout? And who all has influence into Reddit directly at the top levels? We know for sure that Fidelity does. Fidelity is part of the big club, and they have vested interests in the incumbent system. GME, the idiosyncratic risk, threatens that entire incumbent system.
If Reddit actually had conviction to ban the subreddit, it would have been way too obviously heavy handed censorship in the interest of the financial incumbents, such an action would cause a streissand effect type of reaction, and they know it, and I think they smartly realized that they couldn’t do that, at least not back then. So in stead they apparently issued a bunch of threats to the mods, we don’t really know all the conversations that happened, and we the community were warned to smarten up, despite that all we were doing was using the platform as designed and intended. Those mods then have leaned heavily into this narrative, that their own heavy handed censorship and putting-up of barriers is for our own good, that they are doing it to protect the interests of the community.
Sorry, but I just don’t buy this. If those mods actually gave a shit about the community, they would take mitigating actions to protect the interests of the community. They could, for example, start their own lemmy instance. They could encourage GME investors to start their own lemmy instances. They could have supported the drsgme.org team and helped to spread the message of DRS. In stead, they leaned into censorship, they continue to make the experience less enjoyable for the community participants, they mischaracterize the drsgme.org team and are unsupportive of them, nay, antagonistic towards them, and they will ban you if you so much as suggest that there is a piece of software out there that exists called Lemmy or the fediverse.
Personally, I hope superstonk does get banned by Reddit. I wish that the bluff would get called. Superstonk today is not what it was a year ago, and I imagine that it is only going to get worse as time goes on and as the rules become more restrictive and engagement by legitimate participants disappears. If it were to get banned, it would result in a reaction that I believe would ultimately be beneficial for GME investors because it would force GME investors to go somewhere else that is better, and it would prove once and for all the blatant antagonism that is perpetrated against this community by those that hold power.
To chime in, I also prefer to think about the Superstonk mods in the framework you describe. Maintaining a subreddit which discusses a contentious topic is to walk a thinning tightrope, and that’s something I became much more familiar with as one of the mods at DRSyourGME before that subreddit was taken down.
I try to keep holding that sympathy in mind when I consider that the Superstonk mods are well aware of this Lemmy, and of Lemmy as an alternative community in general, but rather than embracing the opportunity provided to get out of Reddit’s shadow they instead have chosen to add Lemmy to the automod on their subreddit.
I’ve offered to help them set up their own Lemmy instance, and our team has also offered that they could set up on our instance. In either case the transparent moderation logs would show that they would be running the show and could implement whatever policies they choose, without the oversight of a shadowed administrative team like Reddit has.
If Reddit was strangling the subreddit and implementing all these rules - and the mods there were truly interested in having an open community with transparent moderation - then they’d set a Lemmy instance up. Bit rhetorical, but why wouldn’t they?
I try not to spend too much time with hypotheticals. It could be as simple as modding a subreddit already takes a lot of their time and they don’t want to mod another. Or maybe they fell victim to ‘lemmy is communist’ misinfo. Or maybe they just think lemmy is shit and doesn’t have a future (fwiw I think this place is great).
spend a little time directly addressing the fact that they banned the use of the word ‘lemmy’?
Reddit allows discussion of Lemmy –– e.g. r/lemmy. r/superstonk censors discussion of Lemmy. Therefore the censorship of Lemmy comes from the r/superstonk moderators –– not from the Reddit administrators.
I don’t consider SS mods to be shills, but they are certainly a far cry from the activist mods of the past. There is certainly an air of entitlement and authority as they swagger about, arbitrarily banning things. Usually no explanation given other than a snotty comment or two. Being a reddit mod makes a person an asshole.