GameStop and r/WallStreetBets

Reddit removed WallStreetBets founder Jaime Rogozinski as a moderator in 2020 for 'attempting to monetize a community,' a move he later challenged in a 2023 lawsuit alleging the rationale was a pretext to control a valuable brand; courts ultimately ruled against him.

As r/wallstreetbets drove the January 2021 GameStop short squeeze, Discord banned the community's server for repeated hate-speech violations, and days later a group of returning moderators attempted to seize control of the subreddit to cash in on a movie deal, prompting Reddit to remove them.

During the January 2021 GameStop squeeze, members of Reddit's r/WallStreetBets directed an off-platform harassment campaign at short-seller Andrew Left of Citron Research, including hacked accounts used to contact his children.

On Feb. 18, 2021, the r/wallstreetbets figure 'DeepFuckingValue' testified before the House Financial Services Committee, denying he coordinated the GameStop squeeze and insisting he was an ordinary investor.

The SEC's October 2021 staff report on the GameStop episode concluded that broad positive sentiment — not a classic short or gamma squeeze — sustained the run-up, and flagged 'digital engagement practices' for further study.

After moderator u/pinkcatsonacid publicly raised concerns about newer r/Superstonk moderators, the subreddit's lead moderators stripped her of her position and banned her, triggering mass resignations and the migration of tens of thousands of GameStop 'apes' to the breakaway community r/GMEJungle.

After splitting from r/GME in 2021, r/Superstonk became the center of a self-reinforcing belief system organized around the 'Mother of All Short Squeezes' (MOASS) and a mass share-registration campaign, with skeptics dismissed as paid 'shills'.

Reddit let users and moderators buy IPO shares with no lock-up, free to sell on day one, while warning investors that its own r/WallStreetBets community could whip the stock into meme-stock volatility — an unusually self-aware set of risk disclosures.