WallStreetBets Harassment of Short-Seller Andrew Left During GameStop
January 2021
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.
What happened
On January 19, 2021, short-seller Andrew Left of Citron Research publicly bet against GameStop, whose shares were being driven up by retail traders coordinating on Reddit's r/WallStreetBets. Left quickly became a focal point for backlash. He described a sustained harassment campaign: nonstop phone calls, a fake Tinder profile created in his name, people appearing at his residence's guardhouse, and the hacking of Citron's Twitter account. His social-media accounts were also reportedly hacked and used to send threatening, profane messages to his children.
On January 29, 2021, Citron announced it would no longer publish short-selling research after twenty years, a decision widely tied to the GameStop episode and the harassment that followed. (Citron later resumed some research activity.)
The harassment was carried out by individuals and largely off-platform, so it should not be attributed to r/WallStreetBets as an institution or to its moderators; the subreddit was the coordination hub and locus of animus rather than a directed-doxxing operation. Even so, the case is a clear example of a named individual being targeted in the real world in connection with a Reddit-driven campaign.
Impact
A prominent financial researcher was harassed to the point of temporarily exiting short-selling research, and the episode became a defining illustration of how Reddit-coordinated retail movements can spill into real-world targeting of named individuals. It featured prominently in subsequent congressional and media scrutiny of the GameStop saga.