[HN Gopher] Robinhood now has a 1-Star rating on the Google Play...
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Robinhood now has a 1-Star rating on the Google Play Store
Author : sschueller
Score : 1023 points
Date : 2021-01-28 19:33 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (play.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (play.google.com)
| interdrift wrote:
| Good.
| AdamN wrote:
| That sound you hear is the evaporation of billions in pre-IPO
| Robinhood equity vanishing based on both a poor decision (to
| disallow buying of a stock that others could still buy) and
| worse, poor execution on their site that didn't make it clear how
| narrow the blocking was.
|
| Those customers who have left Robinhood will never come back and
| it will take years to recover, if ever.
| fireeyed wrote:
| Apple is blocking ratings of Robinhood on AppStore. Coincidence
| much ? "Its a big club and you ain't in it" - George Carlin
| donohoe wrote:
| Don't think so. I just rated it now. It seems to work.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id...
| TecoAndJix wrote:
| If you sort by most recent the last posting was yesterday
| (mobile)
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Opinion: With such wild swings in emotion in the markets right
| now in general, you can't expect investment app ratings to be
| even remotely objective.
|
| IMO Apple is making proactive moves to protect their store's
| rating system reputation, such as it is.
|
| I've used RobinHood since 2016 (not my only brokerage) and the
| app continues to be fine. It's not a race car, it's more like a
| family sedan. The company has been reasonably good at messaging
| and a number of other brokerages also halted buying of $gme,
| $nok, etc.
|
| So not only is RobinHood not getting a fair shake (we haven't
| even heard their side of things), but other brokerages are
| getting _way_ more than what's fair for them given that they
| did the exact same thing.
| wmeredith wrote:
| "Apple is making proactive moves to protect their store's
| rating system reputation"
|
| Ah, that's a good one.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| I know, crazy point I'm sure, but even if you have a bad
| reputation, you should work to keep it from getting worse.
|
| RH app reviews right now are going to be way too emotional,
| and they'll stay there no matter what RH does in the coming
| days. This will take Apple's reputation down a notch on
| both ends--app developer and app reviewer.
| robntheh00d wrote:
| Citadel reloaded shorts before RH cut off gme and the rest
|
| https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315?s=2...
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| "Just got a tip" has about as much clout as "I'm making this
| up"
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Virtually every large multistrat fund is short GME now. This
| doesn't really mean anything.
| [deleted]
| robntheh00d wrote:
| Citadel transacts Robinhood trades and is overstretched due
| to Melvins stupidity
|
| Setting a short position then cutting off trades is pretty
| textbook market manipulation
| rammy1234 wrote:
| Gamestop is not supported on Robinhood. I get a message -- " This
| Stock is not supported on Robinhood"
| zionic wrote:
| Oh it's "supported" if you try to sell it. They only stop you
| from buying.
| rammy1234 wrote:
| why should they stop ? are they really allowed to ?
| unanswered wrote:
| > This stock is not supported on Robinhood.
|
| This is a jabberwocky sentence. It is syntactically correct but
| there is nothing in the real world to which it could be
| referring. Brokers do not "support" stocks.
| pixxel wrote:
| Sharing my lookup of jabberwocky.
|
| > n. Nonsensical speech or writing. > adj. meaningless,
| worthless > adj. absurd, nonsense, non-sensical
|
| From Wiki: "Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis
| Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the
| Jabberwock".
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky
|
| Wonderful word.
| no_one_ever wrote:
| This is suggesting a technical support, not a rah-rah
| support.
| [deleted]
| cabaalis wrote:
| Alpaca sent me a notice this morning that they are also
| restricting trades. It's network behavior like this that is
| troubling.
| Triv888 wrote:
| If everyone in the U.S. would buy only one share of GME, that
| would probably be enough to screw a few billionaires.
| LittlePeter wrote:
| There are 67.5m GME shares outstanding. So yeah, 300m+ people
| competing to own single share would drive GME up.
| babypuncher wrote:
| It's going to be real funny when all the lemmings pumping up
| GME's price lose all their money.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| I predict Google will whitewash their rating within a month.
| bagacrap wrote:
| what incentive do they have to do that?
| askl56 wrote:
| https://twitter.com/TheQuartering/status/1354909724869853188
|
| They already have
| 99_00 wrote:
| Better to have 1 star and stay open than to be shutdown one way
| or another.
|
| Music, taxis, retail, newspapers, politics and others have been
| disrupted by technology and the incumbents have suffered.
|
| The establishment players have all seen this and they aren't
| going to let it happen again to them. They'll let technology in
| but only the way they want.
|
| And now that deplatforming companies and powerful from credit-
| card, cloud providers, app stores, communications is normal and
| accepted they have more power and control than ever.
|
| If I was robinhood I would do the same thing. Standing up for a
| principle is only going to get you shutdown and have everyone
| hate you after the fake news vilifies you and drags you through
| the gutter.
| coliveira wrote:
| I think it is ridiculous that Robinhood took the matters in their
| own hands to halt trading on GME. If anyone had to do this was
| the SEC. It is just outrageous.
| vkou wrote:
| But they haven't blocked trading on GME. They still allow
| selling of GME.
|
| It's pretty blatant market manipulation.
| brink wrote:
| The Parler incident sent a message across the tech industry
| that this kind of behavior is acceptable.
|
| Whether you liked Parler or not, the lynching of Parler was
| ultimately a loss for everyone for the precedent that it set.
| afavour wrote:
| I'm honestly very confused why people keep trying to draw a
| parallel between Parler and Robinhood. Beyond "big companies
| can do whatever they want" there really isn't much in the way
| of comparison. And big companies doing what they want is
| something we've known about since around the time big
| companies first started to exist.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Parler (deplatforming, service) |
| | Discord (deplatforming, WSB) |
| | Robin Hood (functional ban, WSB)
|
| There similarities are not perfect, but enough to draw an
| analogy.
| afavour wrote:
| I'll agree that there are similarities between Parler and
| WSB Discord issue (how much hate speech is tolerated on
| your platform is a decision made by your service
| provider, not you) but the WSB Robinhood issue is
| something else altogether.
| totony wrote:
| The Parler ban was a response from service providers so
| that they are not blamed for what their users (Parler) do
| (controversial opinion).
|
| The GME/etc ban is a response from Robinhood so that they
| are not blamed for what theirs users (retail inverstors)
| do (controversial trading activities/losing money).
| zionic wrote:
| The comparison is not between Parler and Robinbood, it's a
| comparison between companies that canceled Parler and
| Robinhood: Sweeping, unilateral, unaccountable power of
| institutions we had not appreciated the power of
| previously.
| charonn0 wrote:
| I don't see a correlation between the two incidents.
| alangibson wrote:
| One of the good things I see coming out of Robinhood blocking
| trading, Twitter and Reddit booting problematic users, Parler
| getting vaporized, etc. is a sudden realization amongst people of
| just how easily major parts of their lives can be instantly
| turned off by intermediaries.
|
| My hope is that this will drive a reformist movement around
| digital rights (speech, commerce, etc.) As well as a movement
| from platforms to protocols.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I actually think you are sadly wrong with that hope, as much as
| I also wish it were true.
|
| Unfortunately, many people (sadly including the far left, who
| 10 years ago I would have called myself part of) & the media
| are actively celebrating these blocks and shutdowns because it
| serves their ideology. For now.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think calling for violence then carrying out actual violence
| is a bit different than this. But yes, it's like these giants
| now have a taste for deplatforming and are liberally applying
| it now.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I agree, instead of the original idea of the internet being a
| utopia of free speech, decentralization and free trade, it has
| devolved into a place where a select few oligarchies reign
| supreme pushing their views and actions onto the billions of
| users forced into their monopolies. Laws do not apply to them
| and even when they break their own TOS there are no
| repercussions.
|
| A strong digital rights for users is a good start, but I think
| the end goal is that they(the tech monopolies) are essential
| utilities for a majority of the world and should be regulated
| as such. A CEO should not be able to silence a democratically
| elected leader from a communications platform(congress or a
| govt. communications committee should decide), users should be
| able to buy the stock of their choosing(the SEC can decide to
| halt trading pending illegal behavior) and not have that right
| removed by a companies CEO.
| tima101 wrote:
| I hope that these events make more people put their savings and
| time into their own projects instead of bitcoin and stocks.
| worik wrote:
| ...and stop the idea that you can make money by being a smart
| investor.
|
| It is possible.
|
| It is possible to make money buying lottery tickets too.
|
| The best way to make money is to work for it. Yet because of
| a demand for profit and return on investment working people
| are getting squeezed with low wages and bad conditions.
|
| Outrage at a invest platform doing some thing or another - I
| do not care about that. My outrage is at low wages and bad
| conditions for ordinary working people
| bluetwo wrote:
| Until you get rid of forced arbitration clauses, consumer
| rights are an illusion.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I definitely support the notion of moving from platforms to
| protocols, at least in theory. I do think you're going to run
| into the need to regulate wherever communication starts
| impinging on not-purely-informational constructs, like
| securities.
|
| I really hope that gambling on GME is not a "major part" of a
| significant number of people's lives.
| YinglingLight wrote:
| But the aftermath of elite HedgeFunds shorting companies that
| employ us peasants sure as hell does.
| alangibson wrote:
| I was thinking more about being able to trade online, not GME
| specifically.
|
| TBH 'protocols not platforms' has become kind of a slogan
| lately, but history doesn't make it look too promising. Email
| is a protocol, but it has largely been dominated by Google.
|
| A really compelling product can capture a protocol.
| rlayton2 wrote:
| True but I just migrated my email away from gmail due to
| "general google worries" and most colleagues dont realise
| Ive changed and continue to email me
| soperj wrote:
| Realistically though nothing at this moment can supplant
| gmail without people willing to move away from gmail. They
| make it hard for people to do their own thing because they
| spam filter out legitimate email coming from domains that
| they don't like.
| m-chrzan wrote:
| Could it be that people are just so used to platforms, that
| even in the case of the email protocol, they prefer to jump
| onto the Gmail platform that abstracts away from the
| protocol and provides a nice, easy to use platform? If so,
| "protocols, not platforms" remains justified, and
| proponents might hope that as people get more comfortable
| with protocols, they will drift away not only from the
| Facebooks and Twitters of the world, but also the Gmails.
|
| For me personally, even if we end up with large players
| offering the largest (presumably most product-focused)
| instances of various protocols (Gmail with email, imagine
| Tiwtter hosting the largest Mastodon instance, Discord
| providing Matrix hosting), the fact I have the freedom to
| federate and set up my own instance or pay a smaller
| provider that will respect my privacy, is still a much
| better situation than the current "platforms, no
| protocols".
| navait wrote:
| For me at least, it's the anti-spam features, and
| automatic sorting of mail.
| heimatau wrote:
| > I really hope that gambling on GME is not a "major part" of
| a significant number of people's lives.
|
| It's a major part of the mega wealthy's lives. They've
| profited in this pandemic and it's not because of the
| fundamentals. Shorts squeeze the market too much but they (
| hedge funds) should be responsible adults and take their
| losses. Not force Robinhood to unethically force sell it's
| massive user base to liquidate b/c their system bit their
| biggest customer.
|
| We're about to see whether the people actually have rights or
| if this is actually a class warfare situation. I suspect it's
| the latter.
| dvt wrote:
| > I suspect it's the latter.
|
| It's absolutely the latter. GME is a meme stock that people
| will forget about in 3 months. If 2008 didn't cause anyone
| to go to jail (where millions lost their _houses_ and
| _retirements_ ), manipulating a short squeeze on a failing
| company certainly won't.
| sebmellen wrote:
| There was a relevant document posted earlier today at this
| link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25942632.
|
| _" Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free
| Speech (2019)"_
|
| Article subtitle:
|
| > _Altering the internet 's economic and digital infrastructure
| to promote free speech_
|
| I am somewhat skeptical of crypto, but I do hope that the DeFi
| ecosystem, 20 years in the future, will act as a democratizing
| force for financial markets.
| zionic wrote:
| DeFi is a core component of my ETH bull hypothesis. All this
| decentralized activity requires the purchase of ETH to pay
| for/transact on.
| SEJeff wrote:
| Solana seems like a better fit for DeFi than ETH. It is
| also much higher performance, which is very important for
| DeFi.
|
| Disclaimer: I don't hold solana or ETH.
| docmars wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the idea that availability of
| decentralized services should be dependent on the activity
| of a market driving it. If for some reason, something
| unfavorable were to happen with that market, the services
| tied to it would be in jeopardy.
|
| That seems like a terrifying point of failure to have,
| unless I'm misunderstanding how it works.
|
| Perhaps a parallel here is: if the fiat markets are
| struggling, then small businesses may struggle and lack the
| business they need to sustain themselves due to economic
| fears and self-preservation, but that business can exist in
| some form without the market through free trade or other
| means of currency or agreements to provide products and
| services, not beholden to the mercy of a volatile,
| inaccessible digital system that the vast majority of
| people don't understand very well.
| sushisource wrote:
| It requires some way to fund it, but that needn't
| necessarily be ETH. It also well could be, and they have
| first mover advantage. But, and it's a big but, I think the
| most important thing people who know much about crypto
| forget is:
|
| Other people are not like you. Most people have still never
| even _heard_ of Etherium. Most people won 't touch
| something like that without explicit approval from a
| government. Which, obviously, is somewhat contrary to the
| point.
|
| I think the real long term (20+ years) winners in this
| space will gracefully marry the old world with the new,
| until society has gotten used to these concepts and we can
| slowly deprecate some of the centralization.
| asenna wrote:
| > Most people have still never even heard of Ethereum
|
| This statement was true in 2016, 2018 and 2021. The
| difference being the momentum - a LOT more people have
| heard of Ethereum now than back then. I think you might
| be underestimating the network effect that Ethereum has
| in the space. All the tooling, beginner-friendly
| tutorials/books/blogs, institutions and funds flowing
| into the projects, the sheer number of people working on
| projects is super impressive.
|
| For anything else to catch up with Ethereum, it's going
| to take a lot more than "being better technologically".
| Ethereum currently does have major scaling issues but the
| community is converging on the "rollups" Layer-2
| solutions [1] as a temporary option until it gets added
| into Eth2. So I suspect the next few months will be a
| little rough but things like Matic.network or Optimism
| will start maturing.
|
| [1] https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/a-rollup-centric-
| ethereum-r...
| root_axis wrote:
| Except for the fact that eth transaction fees are insane
| and will only increase if popularity does. DeFi is DOA.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| No, DeFi will simply migrate to L2 solutions as they
| become viable.
| root_axis wrote:
| Yeah, funny how the solution to all the inherent problems
| with blockchains is to move off the blockchain. The
| future of "DeFi" is centralization.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| A _viable_ L2 is one that is properly decentralized,
| though its consensus mechanism need not replicate the
| mechanism of L1.
| pa7x1 wrote:
| You are a bit out of date on your assumptions. You can
| read further here:
| https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html
| ant6n wrote:
| But how can you get rich with protocols instead of platforms?
| KirillPanov wrote:
| Never going to happen as long as people insist that stuff works
| on their walled-garden cellphone.
|
| Cellphone lockdowns are the keystone here.
|
| There are sensible arguments for cellphones being walled
| gardens (grandmas can't defend their phone against malware,
| etc), but this is the devil's bargain you have to accept.
|
| As long as people (a) want everything on their cellphone and
| (b) want it to be locked-down enough that they can trust it to
| not listen in on them and stalk their location, everything
| downstream of the cellphone will be intermediated.
| eternalban wrote:
| At this rate, they will red pill everyone with a pulse. It's a
| good thing (/s alert) that we have legislative solution in the
| pipeline just in time to address the inevitable social
| consequences.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I'm not optimistic an "open-source brokerage" will ever exist.
| Barrier to entry is probably too high/impossible to overcome.
| Big hedge funds would just flat out refuse your orders or
| prioritize them at garbage levels.
| chaostheory wrote:
| This should help kickstart a new decentralization movement.
| daenz wrote:
| At the risk of sounding like an "I told you so" type of person,
| it is frustrating to speak out and see others speak out about
| future consequences of these kinds of actions, only to be
| drowned out by people liberally applying the slippery slope
| fallacy argument.
| thisiscorrect wrote:
| I've never understood how a slippery slope argument is a
| fallacy, let alone a logical fallacy (like false syllogism or
| no true scotsman). The idea is essentially looking at current
| trends and extrapolating into the future. No prediction is
| necessarily correct, but it's not necessarily wrong either.
| rlayton2 wrote:
| The other comment has it, but two ways to think about it.
| "If I have one glass of water I might have another. Then
| another. And so on until I drown myself."
|
| The main one though is assuming the parties cant adjust
| course part way though. "If we turn this ship this way we
| will crash into that island in two days!"
|
| Extropolation is different as it takes into a account
| changes in behaviour and real world constraints
| viraptor wrote:
| Yes, the extrapolation is often applied to people who
| really want to achieve one thing going in a particular
| direction, so it makes sense there. "You want to do X
| which is not terrible evil in itself, but if we let you,
| you'll want to do more things like X so we don't want
| that precedent"
| MockObject wrote:
| When you do it, it's the slippery slope logical fallacy.
| When I do it, it's logical induction, a necessary component
| of reasoning about the world.
| Igelau wrote:
| > logical induction, a necessary component of reasoning
| about the world
|
| Bah! You're only saying that because induction worked the
| last _n_ times ;)
| SamBam wrote:
| But if everyone started correctly applying logical
| induction for every piece of reasoning, we'd all become
| mindless robotic automata, hardly better than giant
| abacuses, and art, hope and love would die.
| Igelau wrote:
| It's not a fallacy. It's more like a "logic smell" that
| means you should look closer to see if the arguer is
| jumping to conclusions. If they are you should still
| investigate, e.g. the chain of events they are describing
| may have actually happened in history or could be related
| from personal experience. Affording them merit based on
| that is probably questionable in terms of formal logic, but
| it might not be unwise.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The problem is in how people use it.
|
| If I say it's a slippery slope from A to B, what that's
| supposed to mean is that A being true will increase the
| risk of B becoming true if other things happen as well.
|
| How it's often used though is that if A is a slippery slope
| to B then A is equivalent to B, and thus any issue with B
| is an unavoidable issue for A. And of course it gets worse
| when people jump from A to Z.
| kemayo wrote:
| It's because it's not an argument about the thing itself,
| it's an argument about a speculative thing that _might_
| happen. You can rebut it by just saying "but that _won 't_
| happen". So using it in an argument kinda inherently gets
| you into an unprovable realm.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| In various avenues where it commonly appears (guns, gay
| marriage, speech, privacy, etc) it's particularly
| unhelpful because the US typically lags other western
| nations on this stuff.
|
| So an opposition that relies on "what if" scenarios to
| oppose progressive change is often one which is either
| unaware-of or has explicitly looked at other nations that
| are 10-50 years ahead on whatever the policy is, and
| discovered that enacting step X did not, in fact, lead to
| a downward spiral into nightmare scenario Y.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| "Slippery Slope" can be and is used to object to absolutely
| any action at all.
| marcuskaz wrote:
| This argument is a slippery slope implying any comment
| can be objected.
| krapp wrote:
| A slippery slope argument assumes the maximum degenerate
| outcome of sliding down the slope as a certainty, that no
| one will be able to correct for, mitigate or reverse the
| slide when it starts. That's what makes it a fallacy - it's
| a thought terminating cliche meant to eliminate the
| possibility of nuance, as any middle ground _is implicitly
| part of the slope._
|
| Otherwise, it's just an argument that risk exists, which is
| obvious and uninteresting.
| ttt0 wrote:
| Slippery slope is a valid political tactic for those
| outside the Overton window.
| krapp wrote:
| It's effective, because markets (including the
| marketplace of ideas) are irrational and bad faith
| tactics are often more effective at influencing people
| (at least in the short term) than reason and verifiable
| fact. I wouldn't consider it valid, though.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Or if it's really bad, they make up entirely fanciful
| slopes that you could fall down.
|
| Does it count as a slippery slope fallacy if the
| government argues that not stopping encrypted
| communications will result in terrorists killing your
| grandma? Because I heard that one a lot when Bush was
| president and they haven't really ever stopped using it.
| Is there a better fallacy for that example?
| jlawson wrote:
| Everyone uses slippery slope reasoning in their personal
| lives, because it's a completely valid form of reasoning in
| the real world.
|
| Otherwise we'd be fine with the concept of e.g. trying
| methamphetamine just a few times and then planning to stop.
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| IMO Slippery slope arguments can definitely be valid.
| _Slippery slope fallacies_ are failed slippery slope
| arguments. To successfully argue for the slippery slope,
| one needs to actually argue that the slope exists and will
| lead to the ultimate consequence with meaningful certainty.
| The tactic is so common in sophistry: merely stating A - >
| B -> C -> D -> "nuclear holocaust" does not make it so.
|
| Like... if an event has an 80% chance of occurring as a
| result of an action, it seems that the event is highly
| likely to occur. If this has an 80% chance causing of a
| different event, which has an 80% chance of a different
| event, leading to an 80% chance of a different event, the
| probability of the final event from a point in time before
| the first event occurred would be 41%.
|
| Arguments are a construction of information intended to
| induce an understanding of probability among others, and
| skipping steps along the way weakens trust in that
| conclusion.
| jhayward wrote:
| Ok, since it's a fallacy, I have some mountain trails I'd
| like you to walk today. They are icy, but since it's a
| fallacy, I doubt you'll fall to your death.
| yters wrote:
| Well, once the gov cracks down on ISPs game over. No way we can
| have a grassroots internet without the ISPs.
| riedel wrote:
| I think it is perfectly normal that major parts of ones life
| can be turned off by intermediaries. It is just that they have
| been become rather abstract and difficult to yell at.
| echelon wrote:
| Every time I mention this on Hacker News, I get downvoted by
| the neoliberal fascists that want to suppress the speech they
| feel comfortable with silencing.
|
| Free speech is only free if we allow _all of it._
|
| Americans have thick skin. It's in our culture. We've
| accomplished so much in spite of internal disagreement and
| oppression: voting rights, women's rights, gay marriage (which
| still isn't enshrined in the constitution -- work to be done!)
|
| Imagine if we froze back in the 50's because we didn't have
| free speech. Pick any point in the timeline and freeze the
| American experiment. It will lead to a worse outcome.
|
| I can tolerate some idiots with racist hate flags, Westboro
| funeral protests, etc. Because the freedom we enjoy is worth so
| much more than their minor nuisance.
|
| edit: Yep, predictably downvoted. Go move to another country
| that isn't America so you don't have to listen to people you
| disagree with.
| munk-a wrote:
| > Free speech is only free if we allow all of it.
|
| I am quite happy to see various platforms take on blocking
| commercial spam - this might be in their own interests (since
| they want to sell off the right to advertise rather than have
| people independently leverage their platform to spread
| advertising but I think it's fair to say that nearly no one
| wants completely unlimited speech.
|
| I don't believe that the NYT should be required to print my
| novel into every sunday edition of their paper even if they
| do choose to print some letters to the editor - they have the
| right to choose what to print. A similar parallel was fax-
| vertising, where you send unsolicited faxes to random numbers
| in the hope that someone reads your flier and decides they
| want your services. Back in the day fax-vertising would
| result in a lot of paper waste since the fax would be
| instantly printed out, in the modern world people tend to
| screen incoming faxes, but it is still a problem... Your
| unlimited speech is causing someone to waste paper and ink to
| pay the cost of expressing your speech.
|
| When it comes to digital information the cost goes way down
| and I agree that in this case the actions of social media
| platforms are pretty despicable but in all things we need to
| have balance.
|
| (Also, please don't open up a statement by calling your
| detractors neoliberal facists - this isn't reddit)
| ProtoAES256 wrote:
| Wow, guess I live in and being booted from the USA without me
| even knowing it now... IMO living is all about compromises,
| that way we all benefit from it as a society. But clearly not
| by being ignorant.
| runarberg wrote:
| In my experience--unless your comment is particularly helpful
| --starting a comment with _"I will be downvoted for this"_ is
| only fishing for more downvotes then you'd otherwise get.
| This holds true on most internet forums I've visited.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I won't downvote you, but American history of free speech has
| some really dark spots. Read up on Comstock Laws or Sedition
| Act of 1918 and their victims.
|
| Just like everywhere else, words on paper do not defend
| themselves, even if that paper is the Constitution.
| Authoritarian people will try to sneak in limitations into
| laws, free minded people will have to defend the principle.
|
| This is just a new iteration of a very old war.
| theptip wrote:
| > I get downvoted by the neoliberal fascists
|
| You might get fewer downvotes if you followed the HN rules,
| particularly "be nice". Also, in polite conversation,
| preemptively calling your fellow conversation partners
| fascists is a good way to get off on the wrong foot.
| mnglkhn2 wrote:
| since when "free speech" means to be nice?!
|
| what a tool :)
| throwaway2381 wrote:
| While I agree with your main point re name calling, it's
| absolutely not true that you get fewer downvotes if you
| follow HN's written rules. There are also unwritten
| groupthink (for lack of a better phrase) rules for which
| you _will_ get downvoted for. I don't have many
| controversial opinions but sometimes they are outside the
| generally accepted "truths".
| SR2Z wrote:
| > Go move to another country that isn't America so you don't
| have to listen to people you disagree with.
|
| Wew lad.
|
| Also do you actually know what a neoliberal is?
| majormajor wrote:
| > Americans have thick skin. It's in our culture.
|
| This really doesn't track historically. Lots of voices have
| been historically silenced by American majorities because of
| hurt feelings or "decency."
|
| It's also worth noting that America hasn't been uniformly
| ahead of the curve in terms of granting rights to those that
| were originally denied. Probably the worst example is getting
| rid of slavery, which was far more bloody than in many other
| places. In some other areas we've been ahead of the curve, in
| some behind. But note that some of that also came from the
| courts in controversial ways. The first amendment has not
| correlated to a better track record at granting groups their
| rights.
| nyolfen wrote:
| america categorically has the strongest free speech laws in
| the world, and anyone who would throw away their birthright
| out of fear is a worm
| greesil wrote:
| Please also note that people from many countries participate
| here. I suspect they may also listen to people they disagree
| with.
| alangibson wrote:
| I actually agree with your premise, but I don't want to
| listen to you when you use self contradictory phrases like
| 'neoliberal fascists'. I imagine I'm not alone. You're
| getting downvoted because you sound incoherent and unhinged.
| jsight wrote:
| To be fair, terminology now is really confusing. I'm still
| trying to figure out what is anti-fascist about antifa or
| that really has anything to do with their existence.
| alangibson wrote:
| > what is anti-fascist about antifa
|
| Antifa is an anarchist direct action movement that tries
| to deny Fascist groups the ability to organize by
| basically beating the crap out of them when they try to
| get together.
|
| "Fascist" isn't a synonym for "politics I don't like".
| worik wrote:
| Helpfully?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
| ska wrote:
| I've seen the essence of this opinion posted by others
| without downvoting.
|
| Have you considered the votes are less to do with the opinion
| than your choices in communicating it?
| Zigurd wrote:
| This isn't All One Thing. It isn't even all one thing inside
| the Robin Hood/Gamestop thing. Wall Street Bets got banned on
| Discord for calls to violent action, on the one hand, and their
| bets got throttled on Robin Hood because Robin Hood's data
| customers, who are legal-ishly front-running Robin Hood users,
| do not like what Robin Hood users are legal-ishly doing.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > My hope is that this will drive a reformist movement around
| digital rights (speech, commerce, etc.) As well as a movement
| from platforms to protocols.
|
| I don't have much hope for this, mainly because being the owner
| of a platform is much more profitable than being one of many
| protocol end points. Look at git. It is hard to think of a more
| open protocol, and yet GitHub absolutely dominates and it is a
| big deal if they decide to cut off your repo.
|
| A better alternative is for government to fund and operate
| critical infrastructure or at least heavily regulate it.
|
| I don't have to worry that I will get deplatformed from mail,
| because the USPS is there and they have strict legal
| requirements prohibiting them from deplatforming people. I
| don't have to worry that I won't be deplatformed from roads,
| because most roads are operated by the government, which is
| under strict legal precedents that they can't deplatform me. It
| is similar with utilities such as electricity, water, gas which
| are privately operated but heavily regulated.
|
| Some of the internet infrastructure is both becoming more vital
| as has economies of scale such that there is an inherent drive
| for consolidation. As such, I think it is becoming time that
| such things be regulated like utilities.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Is EFF doing the work to advocate for responsible regulation?
| Is there an alternative to EFF (Electronic Frontiers
| Foundation) that is more in line with the spirit of your
| comment?
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| You are using the term "deplatform" completely wrong.
|
| None of the things you mention are platforms.
|
| Mail is not a platform. Roads are not a platform.
| Electricity, water and gas are not platforms.
|
| These are all examples of point to point connection. None of
| them allow you to reach millions of people unfederated.
|
| If you start sending out illegal hate mail to millions of
| people, you bet you'll be "deplatformed" by the USPS. They
| will cut off your account and probably press charges.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > If you start sending out illegal hate mail to millions of
| people, you bet you'll be "deplatformed" by the USPS.
|
| If you start sending out legal harassment mail to millions
| of people, you'll get a discount.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Maybe make Protecting free speech part our governments highest
| law.
|
| Maybe we could amend the law. Seriously.
|
| Lots of people love to dump on the constitution as old and not
| relevant. But it's meant to restrict government and protect
| people's freedom.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| B-but what if people say mean things? :/
| chaos986 wrote:
| That's part of the Sophie's Choice. If we have private
| owned social media, then they will moderate according to
| public opinion. If we have us government run social media
| then we have no moderation at all because 1st amendment
| applies only to us government.
|
| So is it morally allowable to discuss <abhorrent topic>
| online? Should it be law to allow or disallow <abhorrent
| topic>?
|
| Who decides what the majority of people consider to be
| abhorrent?
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I think you central questions it the most important one,
| but the dichotomy between private and public is forced. A
| phone company is not forced to moderate the communication
| of its clients.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I don't believe parent said they were forced, only that
| they would do it. And that makes sense, since their
| desire is to minimize damage to their brand.
|
| There is a simple solution to this if you don't like the
| way they behave: stop using their product, and recommend
| others do the same.
|
| Of course, your not using it doesn't prevent others from
| using it if they want to, but that's freedom of choice
| for you.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I am all for the free market, but when companies grow too
| dominant it no longer works, and we should not pretend
| otherwise. Just look at what happened to Parler.
| monkeywork wrote:
| true but the analogy falls apart when you realize that
| 99% of phone conversations are peer to peer and between
| 2-4 people.
|
| social media posts can be a single person communicating
| with millions.
|
| the damage per unit of effort is much much lower for the
| unmoderated phone vs the unmoderated social
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I agree, its an open problem. One one hand no one elected
| these companies as arbiters of what is good but on the
| other society at large is not equipped to handle the
| tsunami of speech that the internet enabled. Something
| has to be done.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| I'm not sure if you were trying to be sarcastic, but to your
| last point; I think it is overlooked (intentionally or not)
| that the Constitution is already a set of laws and the
| highest laws at that. The "Bill of Rights" is not what people
| have been misled to believe, a list of rights you have and
| are given by government. In fact, they are the bill of laws
| that restrain the government from infringing on the natural
| God given rights every American already has by birth.
|
| Having a correct and accurate understanding of that carries a
| whole host of implications with it, e.g., it makes the tech
| companies' censorious autocratic behavior a violation of the
| natural God given human rights that the government is as
| prohibited from abridging as much as the tech companies that
| fall under it's jurisdiction.
|
| What we are facing, just to continue the example to further
| illustrate the point, is the tech companies are violating
| human rights through their censorious ways and they are
| violating the Constitution, the highest law of the land. If
| the USA were still a functional and healthy society any court
| would issue an immediate order to require all tech companies
| to not violate the human rights that the Constitution
| prohibits any inferior jurisdiction (everything falling under
| the Constitution, i,e., everything) from violating. The US
| Code even provides penalties for the violation of the
| Constitutional laws that the Government and the tech
| companies are persistently and even maliciously violating on
| a regular basis.
|
| It is rather clear that the far larger problem is the
| breakdown of fundamental rule of law (mutually agreed upon
| parameters for peace) and the replacement and encroachment of
| ever more rule of power (I will do whatever I want because I
| have the ability to make you). It will not end well one way
| or another if it is not fixed soon, and it does not look like
| those with the lust of power in their eyes have any intention
| of giving up anything.
| StillBored wrote:
| For the cynics like myself. The lack of action on the part
| of the government to restrict and hold corporations to the
| same level as the government is supposedly held by the
| constitution seems intentional.
|
| Its a backdoor way around the constitutional restrictions.
| AKA the government can't restrict free speech or search
| your house everyday, but its going to allow everyone else
| to restrict and search your house for the same effect.
| Given the close ties between the leaders & .001%, the
| result is the same. It won't matter to you when you get
| charged with a crime you didn't commit whether the
| government was tracking your phone or the phone company
| reports your phone to the government. The result is the
| same.
| valuearb wrote:
| No one is restricting anyone's speech or searching their
| house. Sorry that you can't force other people to host
| your thoughts tho, sounds so frustrating.
| StillBored wrote:
| Really, where do you live?
|
| Because where I live the government via corporations is
| scraping up "metadata" which includes people's web cams
| feeds, phone records, etc. AKA searching their house. And
| if you haven't been paying attention, as despicable as
| the speech is, political "speech" is being suppressed by
| large tech and media companies, and to a lesser extent
| what people actually say in public spaces, be that the
| library or the workplace.
| valuearb wrote:
| The Bill of Rights doesn't enumerate rights for Americans,
| it enumerates them for everyone (outside of specific voting
| rights).
|
| And those rights are only to protect you from government
| actions because it's the ultimate monopoly.
|
| The first amendment does not give you the right to enter
| someone else's house to spread your political opinions,
| just as the second doesn't give you the right to walk in to
| their home with your loaded guns.
|
| And stop trying to redefine the word monopoly. The internet
| is completely free and anyone can post whatever they want
| on their own web site.
| stormcode wrote:
| Yes, to a point, the 'internet is free'. But you are sort
| of twisting the point a bit I think. Not only does it
| cost money to have a website in many cases, but to be
| close to 'free' in terms of what you can post the
| theoretical person you are referring to needs to run
| their own web server, and their own DNS server, and
| hopefully they don't expect to need a domain name...
|
| Otherwise, it is not in fact free. Registrars can take
| your domain (look what is happening to eu domains owned
| by UK folx) and web hosts, are in part responsible for
| the content they host and can refuse to continue to do
| business with you.
|
| Hell, even if you roll your own setup, the ISP you use
| can still choose not to do business with you, leaving
| your entire setup offline.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I'm sorry, is it an inalienable human right to use other
| people's property to spread speech now? When did that
| happen?
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| A better way would be to update the definition of a public
| square to take into account the exponential scaling offered
| by digital services. Communication and commerce
| infrastructure should not be allowed to censor the moment
| they cross a critical point in scale.
| thephyber wrote:
| From my perspective, you just flipped the purpose of 1A.
|
| Right now you have the right to associate or disassociate
| with whomever you like (protected classes aside). In your
| altered future, the government forces churches to allow
| atheists and rival religions to be allowed to speak at the
| church, despite the desires of the owners and congregation.
| It would effectively be compelled association.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Nonsense.
|
| Trouble is when government gives out monopolies, or
| supporting monopolies they like.
|
| Government currently closed side.
|
| Government has chosen atheism as its religion. Very hostile
| toward other religions. Everyone pays for government
| school, but want to a Christian education, then you have to
| pay twice.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > Government has chosen atheism as its religion.
|
| All the cash in my wallet says otherwise.
| root_axis wrote:
| That's like saying virginity is a fetish. Atheism is not
| a religion, it's a lack of belief in a supernatural
| deity.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| It's belief in the lack of a supernatural deity.
|
| Subtle difference, as required by the topic.
| Igelau wrote:
| That doesn't quite work.
|
| I'm not a stamp collector. Does that mean I lack a stamp
| collection, or do I have a collection of a lack of
| stamps?
|
| If I am asymptomatic, is there a lack of symptoms, or is
| my symptom the lack thereof?
| thephyber wrote:
| I find the monopoly issue troubling, but I don't
| understand how your proposal fixes it.
|
| Government schools aren't atheist - they are secular.
| They simply aren't allowed to teach Christianity because
| Jews and Muslims would have the same "I have to pay
| twice" complaint you mentioned. Also, what you say about
| Christian education is factually wrong. There are plenty
| of places in the USA where you can find a Christian
| Charter school or use school vouchers.
| monkeywork wrote:
| >Everyone pays for government school, but want to a
| Christian education, then you have to pay twice.
|
| Work with your government to have you taxes assigned to
| the Christian school. Here in Ontario Canada when you
| file your taxes you select if your child is attending
| catholic school and the catholic school board gets
| revenue equal to the number of people attending.
| valuearb wrote:
| Let me know when churches start paying taxes...
| rizpanjwani wrote:
| >Government has chosen atheism as its religion
|
| You're gonna want to provide proof of that claim.
| SamBam wrote:
| So the government would force private corporations to let
| anyone say what they wanted on their sites? And this new
| sweeping government power would somehow.... restrict the
| government?
|
| Do you not see how that's contradictory?
|
| And what would it even look like? Would Hacker News no longer
| be allowed to have moderators?
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I'm less into the free speech component. I think companies
| should have the right to curate a community they see fit.
|
| What I do care about is moving to protocols and data
| portability. I want the ability to switch to another provider
| if I'm not happy with their decisions. I absolutely don't like
| my data being held hostage.
|
| I also hope this realization extends to things like GMail which
| hasn't yet seen a similar scrutiny
| 974373493200 wrote:
| > My hope is that this will drive a reformist movement around
| digital rights (speech, commerce, etc.) As well as a movement
| from platforms to protocols.
|
| I hope so too and I hope that movement will develop and adopt
| technological solutions and not advocate for government force.
| This is an opportunity for people to control their means of
| communication and create a more robust internet that can better
| withstand censorship attempts in the future. I fear it will
| instead be taken advantage of by people who want to increase
| government control perhaps to prevent competition with the
| currently dominant actors on the market. Any further
| normalization of government control of communication or the
| internet must be resisted if we are to have any chance to keep
| the truly wonderful thing that the internet is today, despite
| all its imperfections.
| drewcon wrote:
| Yeah I can't wait to live in a world where we enable more
| financial market mobbing by the uninformed and emotional
| masses. What could go wrong?
|
| Tune will change when RSUs and 401ks get effected.
| leesalminen wrote:
| I don't know about you, but the vast majority of people I
| know don't have RSUs nor 401ks.
| drewcon wrote:
| About 1/3 of Americans have a 401k. The RSU snipe was just
| for the orange website crowd.
| [deleted]
| gameswithgo wrote:
| What is your hope for reforming the ability of a single person
| to keep repeating a lie and nearly causing an insurrection?
| alangibson wrote:
| I wouldn't say 'nearly'. The Capitol Riot definitely fit the
| standard definition of an insurrection.
|
| Your 'single person' straw man aside, I don't think the
| conduits of conversation are the right place to attack this
| problem. It's just far too risky to have utterly
| unaccountable businesses be in the business of policing what
| people say.
|
| I have the radical opinion that the police should be doing
| the policing. If people are criming online (threats of
| violence, planning to overthrow the government), they should
| get a visit from The Law.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Voter fraud happened. There's video evidence of it occurring
| in State Farm Arena in Fulton County, GA. There's forensic
| evidence of 70% failure rates on voting machines in Antirim
| County, Michigan. There's 1000+ witness affidavits signed and
| presented under the penalty of perjury in various
| legislatures around the country. There's also statistical
| fraud detection algorithms that have numerous red flags with
| regards to the 2020 election. Repeating the lie that claims
| of fraud are unsubstantiated is the real problem. We have a
| broken, hackable electoral system with systemic issues.
| monkeywork wrote:
| link to sources please - like the source video, the source
| evidence on the failure rates, etc.
|
| also explain why no court, no intelligence agency (local or
| international), and the vast majority of the US Senate
| (consisting of both major political parties) disagrees with
| your assessment.
|
| Also if the presidential votes are invalid than I guess we
| need to assume all the other items on the ballet (house,
| senate, bills, etc) were also invalid correct?
| antiterra wrote:
| State Farm Arena video doesn't show fraud to any reasonable
| degree, at the absolute _best_ it's an irregularity. The
| Antirim report is massively flawed, written by an 'expert'
| with no credibility who used Minnesota counties to 'prove'
| Michigan fraud. Hand waving at 'affidavits' is not
| evidence. The statistics arguments don't stand scrutiny
| when known limitations like sample size, turnout volatility
| and count completion are taken into account.
|
| Bundling together lots of individual garbage theories into
| giant piles doesn't net you anything other than garbage
| theories, just like bundling bad mortgage securities didn't
| mitigate risk in the subprime crisis.
|
| Instead of saying 'lots of statistical algorithms,' name
| one, or even two, that stand up to genuine scrutiny (and
| that aren't the readily debunked Charles J. Cicchetti
| claims.) Don't hide behind the sheer number of crackpot
| theories. Or, you know, admit you have nothing but a hunch
| based on cognitive dissonance.
| preommr wrote:
| That it should be up to congress and law enforcement - people
| that are accountable to the public, to make these rules.
|
| Everything about what twitter did was stupid. They let him
| talk for years, and then finally stopped him at the worst
| time. They cancelled him when there was little more damage he
| could do and ruined ideas of free speech neutrality and it
| allowed his ilk to claim censorship and it helped with making
| him a martyr. Just absolute stupidity.
|
| Letting corporations deal with dangerous thought leaders is
| not a solution that has even the slimmest chance of working.
| alangibson wrote:
| It's really hard not to think that Twitter's timing had
| alot to do with their stock price. It's hard to boot the
| user driving the most engagement on your platform.
| balls187 wrote:
| I just ran through a thought experiment--if Google (gmail)
| Apple (my phone) and Tmobile (the current owners of my number)
| all simultaneously nuked me, could I recover?
|
| Luckily yes. Online access would be hindered, but nearly all my
| financial resources are handled through a local credit union.
| asenna wrote:
| Even better - having savings in a crypto hardware wallet :)
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Robinhood was just hit with class action lawsuit over this:
|
| _The financial trading app Robinhood is been hit with a
| federal class action lawsuit after it restricted trades to
| stocks popular on the Reddit forum r /WallStreetBets, sending
| Redditors and app users into a meltdown._
|
| _The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York on
| Thursday, alleges that the app "purposefully, willfully, and
| knowingly removing the stock 'GME' from its trading platform in
| the midst of an unprecedented stock rise, thereby deprived
| [sic] retail investors of the ability to invest in the open-
| market and manipulating the open-market."_
|
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/robinhood-hit-with-class-actio...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Anti-trust law is a far cleaner way to approach that, with far
| fewer unintended consequences.
| karlmcguire wrote:
| Yea, because that's been working great thus far.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| "The government has been unwilling to use existing powers
| against powerful corporations, maybe if we give them new
| and more expansive powers that'll do the trick. There's no
| possible way that these new powers will be turned against
| the powerless, right?"
| theptip wrote:
| Well no, the US hasn't been enforcing its existing
| antitrust laws very rigorously, that's the point the GP is
| making.
|
| E.g. see https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-
| product/antitrust-en...
|
| Rather than proposing a new technological solution to the
| problem ("platforms to protocols") which may work but is
| unproven, we could simply restart the use of existing tools
| that have been proven to work. This has the advantage of
| being a strategy that can be explained to non-technical
| folks.
| jjk166 wrote:
| If I have a car that worked great 50 years ago but
| haven't been able to turn it on since the 70s when my
| neighbor destroyed the engine, I would not call that a
| proven, working car.
|
| The "existing tools" have been proven to have a major
| weakness, namely they can be neutered by regulatory
| capture. Unless you can get everyone to magically forget
| how they circumvented the rules last time, you can't
| simply restart using them.
| alangibson wrote:
| You can't really say antitrust hasn't been working when no
| one has been using it. The laws are fine if we have the
| will to apply them.
| tw600040 wrote:
| "movement from platforms to protocols" is essentially anti-
| trust laws codified
| slg wrote:
| Depending on how its done, "movement from platforms to
| protocols" can also be anarchy codified. Most people don't
| want that either.
| worik wrote:
| Please do not use the word "anarchy" as a synonym for
| "chaos". Anarchy is the opposite of chaos
| slg wrote:
| What distinction are you trying to make here? A
| completely open protocol with no single controlling
| entity would not be inherently beholden to government
| control or laws like a platform would be. It can result
| in the distribution of illegal content such as child
| porn. How is this not an example of potential anarchy?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Anarchists as a political group usually don't like it
| when anarchy is compared to chaos, as this is usually a
| comparison that was formed by their ideological
| opponents.
| slg wrote:
| I still don't understand this point. I am not describing
| chaos. I am describing the specific drawbacks of a lack
| of centralized authority overseeing things. Isn't that
| the dictionary definition of anarchy. What am I missing?
| worker767424 wrote:
| Throwing this out there, too: assorted government restrictions
| and lockdowns imposed by regional public health officials. The
| early ones were more justified because we knew less, but as the
| pandemic drug on, the burden of proof justifying closures
| needed to increase, and legislators needed to step up and
| legitimize the policies. It's like how the president can wage
| war for 90 days, but then has to get approval from congress.
| ziziyO wrote:
| We needed to put more people at risk because we couldn't
| prove that they would get sick?
| vkou wrote:
| It's worse then that.
|
| We need to put more people at risk, because we can't meet
| some nebulous, ever-shifting standard that asks us to trade
| human lives for dollars of economic activity. Nobody wants
| to pin down exactly how many dollars they think a human
| life is worth, though.
|
| On the one hand, we've got every special interest group
| under the sun loudly shouting that their business is
| special, and must be allowed to operate as if nothing has
| changed over the past year.
|
| On the other hand, we've got public health - a communal
| good, that everyone is responsible for, but nobody gets
| _held_ responsible for.
| x3iv130f wrote:
| The closures were tied to ICU overflow capacity which seems a
| reasonable policy to me.
|
| Unfortunately what and how things were closed seemed
| haphazard and not entirely justified or communicated
| effectively.
|
| There should have been more contact tracing and a focus to
| close only areas prone to spreading Covid-19.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| I'm with you on this. It's shameful that Congress and State
| Legislatures have abdicated power to executive functionaries
| indefinitely. We're closing in on D-Day+1 year and our
| deliberative bodies have yet to deliberate our public health
| policies (although Congress has proven they can stimulate
| demand for consumer goods, from time to time).
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Especially in states like California. My rich friends can and
| continue to travel. My friends in the service sector are at
| home collecting a meager unemployment. It doesn't jibe well
| with the ethos CA proudly proclaims. They shutdown outdoor
| dining and even playgrounds while Costco, Amazon warehouses
| and Best Buy can be packed. We also know and have data that
| masks work but salons were closed. (A case in Texas comes to
| mind where a barber had covid but didn't pass it to any of
| the 45 clients because they wore masks). What was way more
| important was good ventilation and indoor masking.
|
| In general social psychology have to be factored in as well.
| Anecdotally speaking, shutting down outdoor dining pushed
| more people to party at home.
| Bud wrote:
| No, we don't have data that masks are protective in a salon
| situation where people are in close contact for a long
| time. I wouldn't trust the masks that most people are using
| (surgical masks with half-inch gaps on either side and
| quarter-inch gaps around the nose, or single-layer cloth
| masks) to protect me in that scenario.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| On iTunes it is still rated 4.8, but they have a lot more ratings
| overall (2.4m vs 335k).
| jb775 wrote:
| Time for everyone to cash in their 401k's (aka the system where
| the middle class gives their life savings to the elites).
|
| If there's this level of blatant corruption, who really thinks
| they won't get screwed out of their retirement savings in a few
| decades?
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| a bunch of idiots acting like children because they don't know
| how clearing works, cool
| systematical wrote:
| Brigaded. They are toast. Everyone I know with a RH account is
| going to close it.
| robot1 wrote:
| I honestly feel bad for all the employees, especially the early
| ones with equity that were looking forward to cashing out after
| the IPO - now they have to deal with immensely negative PR and
| federal investigations.
| rumblerock wrote:
| For this reason I imagine that the first unconfirmed leak
| mentioned in another post will be far from the last. As if WSB
| vs. hedge funds wasn't a crazy enough story itself, the sequel
| to The Big Short is pretty much writing itself as the other
| players in the system expose exactly where they stand.
| Regulators and the Federal Government chapters incoming...
| mycentstoo wrote:
| Still 4.8 on the App Store though
| muleroid wrote:
| I believe App Store updates a day later, so we're likely not
| seeing the results of any mass rating bombs.
| prophesi wrote:
| It can also take a while for a rating to go through. Once you
| tap the allotted stars you'd like to rate an app, you need to
| wait until you see the "Your feedback was submitted" modal to
| appear.
| mycentstoo wrote:
| Ah that makes sense. I wasn't aware of that.
| stickydink wrote:
| App Store also allows you to reset the ratings when you
| launch an update
| mrtksn wrote:
| Not exactly a day later but the ratings tend to come with 6
| to 12 hours delay. Sometimes more.
|
| Also, there's this strange thing that some of the ratings
| disappear and come back later or not.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| Just as I was wondering how many retail investors might be
| involved:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947674
|
| From the number of Playstore votes it seems quite a few?
|
| Will be interesting to see if it stays that way. Or if they can
| somehow cheat their way out of it and get all recent ratings
| deleted or something.
|
| Any guesses?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Optimally the result is Robin Hood is removed from the play and
| apple store for willfully defrauding their customers. Very real
| damages were suffered as a result of their willful actions.
| There was no warning and there was no way they did not know
| harm would come. Also if no retail traders could buy, who was
| buying the shares that they were forced to sell? If it was the
| short hedge funds, that has got to be a criminal conspiracy
| level charge.
| mantap wrote:
| It's a bubble. Bubbles pop. Robinhood's argument would be
| that they prevented harm to investors by preventing them from
| putting money into a bubble that was going to pop anyway. As
| soon as this hit the news you got all kinds of regular people
| wanting to get in on the action, not connected to WSB.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Bubbles do pop, and this was clearly a bubble but this was
| not a popping bubble. This was someone picking up their
| ball and going home. They can make whatever argument they
| want, we will see how it is litigated out. It was a clear
| coordinated action though across several brokerages.
| bagacrap wrote:
| they are the ones trying to pop the bubble. Stop pretending
| like RH is trying to protect retail, only institutions are
| benefiting from this.
| psychlops wrote:
| Only approved messages are now allowed on the large platforms.
| I predict they will "correct" the error.
| SCHiM wrote:
| Funny how that works. An algorithm, a computer, can ban your
| entire virtual presence at a whim, with no recourse. (talking
| about Google obviously).
|
| But the opinions of incensed humans aren't worth the rollback
| it takes to "correct" the problem.
|
| The entirety of google is a money making machine intelligence
| serving it's few wealthy owners, and absolutely disrupting
| and destroying everything else.
|
| We need to take the torch to our big tech overlords.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| If they keep selling people's stocks without their consent,
| then yeah, I'm pretty sure it'll stay until RH can buy better
| reviews.
|
| [edit]
|
| though there are some reports that the stocks were bought on
| margin, which makes it more(?) okay, I guess?
| beagle3 wrote:
| The sells were appropriate if bought on margin (once the
| share price took a dive). The thing is, RobinHood refused
| "buy" order that were completely inline with the margin
| requirements, and _that_ caused the share price to dive.
|
| Seems to be a coordinated move among all retail browsers
| (including IB according to people on this discussion -
| despite publicly claiming they are just hiking margins).
|
| Basically, as of this morning, retail clients could only
| sell, whereas institutional clients could buy and sell as
| they wish.
|
| Doesn't sound remotely ok. In fact, sounds completely
| entirely not ok, and likely illegal (but I am not a lawyer)
| newacct583 wrote:
| > RobinHood refused "buy" order that were completely inline
| with the margin requirements, and that caused the share
| price to dive.
|
| This is just a conspiracy theory. It doesn't even make
| sense. If GME was objectively such a good bet, you really
| think that those institutional investors out there were
| simply ignoring it? That Robinhood's users _alone_ were the
| _sole_ reason for the speculative spike in this stock?
|
| This is a SCAM. Robinhood users were the VICTIMS. And I
| won't speak to their motives, and am no real fan, but the
| truth is Robinhood saved you people a ton of money by
| refusing those trades.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| You people? Seriously?
| llampx wrote:
| I call bullshit
| beagle3 wrote:
| And yet, as soon as WeBull allowed it again, it went up
| quite a bit. So we have proof positive that RH cost these
| people very real money.
|
| What I'm saying is that you are provably wrong.
| munk-a wrote:
| In the modern world the right to waste money is held to
| be very sacred - I have always viewed casinos as a great
| money -> fun conversion machine for those who can
| sensibly enjoy it... but for those who can't there isn't
| anyone stopping them at the door and saying "We already
| have 90% of your money, why don't you go home and enjoy a
| quiet evening of netflix".
|
| The stock market has a long reputation of saying "Well,
| sucks to be you" when various scams are committed - even
| when a hedge fund manager burns through a bunch of
| retirement funds and then shows up at the company
| demanding their annual retainer so I am quite reluctant
| to buy that this one instance is when altruism is coming
| in to play.
|
| A bunch of people are choosing to loose a bit of their
| money in exchange for warm fuzzy feelings - I think it's
| absolutely idiotic but then again I don't tend to
| patronize casinos either. If there is someone behind this
| running a pump & dump scam they absolutely should be
| prosecuted as normal, but falling victim to a financial
| scam on the stock market is one of those properties
| capitalist libertarians always hold up and they can't
| change their mind just because this one instance ended up
| screwing them over instead.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| e: I'm leaving my original comment below for posterity, but I
| learned upthread that I was substantially misinformed here.
| Robinhood accounts are _by default_ margin accounts, and
| their documentation describes this in an incredibly
| misleading way
| (https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/robinhood-
| accou...):
|
| > When you sign up for a new account, you'll automatically
| start with a Robinhood Instant account, which is a margin
| account. This means you'll have access to instant deposits
| and extended-hours trading. You also won't have to wait for
| your funds to process when you sell stocks or make a deposit
| (up to $1,000).
|
| I stand by my claim that margin accounts necessarily require
| forced liquidation, but this is pretty indefensible.
|
| -----
|
| If the stocks were bought on margin it's entirely non-
| objectionable. Forced liquidation is a well-known practice
| that's fundamental to margin accounts as a concept - without
| it, a margin account is just an unsecured loan, and nobody's
| going to offer the average margin trader a low-cost unsecured
| loan for stock speculation.
| adrr wrote:
| Margin accounts have capital requirements. If you're over
| leveraged, they will liquidate your positions to ensure you
| have capital. This is standard. If people didn't know about
| this, they have no business with a margin account.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| 1. Robinhood accounts are all margin by default. Most
| novice investors don't know the difference. They should,
| but I would wager Robinhood doesn't spend a lot of time
| educating people about this.
|
| 2. Long positions (buying and holding stock) aren't
| leveraged. There is no capital risk to holding a stock. If
| the sales of GME are entirely based on other positions
| being underwater, then sure, but it seems at least some of
| the examples provided aren't in that situation.
| jquery wrote:
| > There is no capital risk to holding a stock.
|
| A broker can change margin maintenance requirements at
| any time, including for shares bought with margin. When
| using margin, a broker has wide latitude to liquidate
| positions of the account using margin.
| matwood wrote:
| I thought RH only allowed margin if you paid the monthly
| fee? Or, are you talking about margin for purposes of
| settling so you can trade again before a sale is fully
| settled?
| adrr wrote:
| https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/upgrading-
| to-go...
|
| Robinhood let's you borrow money to buy stocks. If you
| borrow $10k to buy GME at $300 and it dropped to $100.
| There's a risk to RH that you won't be able to payback
| the loan. RH most likely will liquidate the position
| before it even hits $100 to mitigate the risk on the loan
| depending how leveraged you are.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| It turns out that Robinhood accounts are margin by default,
| which is not really standard practice. I couldn't prove that
| this behavior (closing held positions without consent) was
| intended with that design, but it does feel pretty gnarly.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > though there are some reports that the stocks were bought
| on margin, which makes it more(?) okay, I guess?
|
| https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Custo.
| ..
|
| 4. Liquidation. In the event of the death of the Customer, or
| _in the event the margin in any account in which the Customer
| has an interest shall in either Robinhood's or the
| Introducing Broker's discretion become unsatisfactory_ to
| either Robinhood or the Introducing Broker, or be deemed
| insufficient by either Robinhood or the Introducing Broker,
| _Robinhood is hereby authorized; (a) to sell any or all
| securities or other property which Robinhood may hold for the
| Customer_ (either individually or jointly with others); (b)
| to buy any or all securities and other property which may be
| short in such accounts; and /or (c) to cancel any open orders
| and to close any or all outstanding contracts; all without
| demand for margin or additional margin, notice of sale or
| purchase, or other notice or advertisement, and that any
| prior demand or notice shall not be a waiver of its rights
| provided herein.
|
| (emphasis added, and if you like that there's an arbitration
| agreement too.)
|
| https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Margi.
| ..
|
| WE CAN SELL YOUR SECURITIES OR OTHER ASSETS WITHOUT
| CONTACTING YOU. Some investors mistakenly believe that their
| brokerage firm must contact them for a margin call to be
| valid, and that their firm cannot liquidate securities or
| other assets in their accounts to meet the call unless the
| firm has contacted them first. This is not the case. Although
| we may attempt to notify you of margin calls, we are not
| required to do so. However, even if we have contacted you and
| provided a specific date to meet a margin call, we can still
| take necessary steps to protect our financial interests,
| including immediately selling the securities without notice
| to you. We may forcibly liquidate all or part of your account
| without prior notice, regardless of your intent to satisfy a
| margin call, in order to protect your interests or our
| interests.
|
| YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO CHOOSE WHICH SECURITIES OR OTHER
| ASSETS IN YOUR ACCOUNT(S) ARE LIQUIDATED OR SOLD TO MEET A
| MARGIN CALL. Because the securities are collateral for the
| margin loan, we have the right to decide which security to
| sell in order to protect our interests.
|
| WE CAN INCREASE "HOUSE" MAINTENANCE MARGIN REQUIREMENTS AT
| ANY TIME AND ARE NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE YOU ADVANCE WRITTEN
| NOTICE. These changes in policy often take effect immediately
| and may result in the issuance of a maintenance margin call.
| Your failure to satisfy the call may require us to liquidate
| or sell securities in your account(s).
| freeone3000 wrote:
| That's referring to margin specifically, not a held
| position. There's a difference between margin trading and
| holding the stock in your name.
| [deleted]
| Kranar wrote:
| The loophole here is that all new Robinhood accounts are
| margin accounts by default. You have to go through a
| process to switch from a margin account to a cash account
| and I suspect 95% of Robinhood's customers have no idea
| what the difference is or why they'd ever want to do
| that.
|
| So Robinhood technically is allowed to do this as per the
| letter of the law, and now the question is whether
| Robinhood is violating any fiduciary duties they have to
| their customers.
| lordnacho wrote:
| But how many of the accounts have larger positions in GME
| than equity? It doesn't make sense to margin call or
| liquidate someone who is good for the whole amount. Also
| if someone has some leverage it's not reasonable to
| liquidate them completely.
| Kranar wrote:
| I am in total agreement with you, this is outrageous. I'm
| only speculating as to what I believe Robinhood's
| position is, which is that these accounts are technically
| margin accounts and so Robinhood has the right to
| liquidate them as per the account "agreement".
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| This is exactly why people should be outraged. The type
| of risk that requires a margin call isn't present by just
| holding long positions in a security. Unless you are
| trading options or selling short, your equity is equal to
| your positions, and no margin call should be necessary.
|
| They are literally using the margin call mechanic to
| force closures in positions that have no risk.
| jquery wrote:
| Unlikely. Robinhood has something called 'instant
| deposits' which creates massive risk when used to buy
| something like GME with unsettled funds.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| An unsettled ACH withdrawal that _you initiated_ does not
| cause massive risk. It 's a two-day float. There's no way
| to undo an ACH transfer; it's guaranteed funds. Even if
| you lose all of it, it doesn't matter, since they'll be
| paid back once the check clears.
| Kranar wrote:
| A margin call that liquidates a customer is not only
| perfectly reasonable but responsible on the part of the
| broker. I would never hold it against Robinhood to
| liquidate positions or have restrictions on buying/selling
| stocks where the broker could be at risk.
|
| The problem is that Robinhood is selling positions that are
| fully covered by their clients as well as prohibiting the
| buying of shares even when the purchase is 100% covered by
| the user.
|
| I've been in this industry for 15 years now, including
| obviously the great recession, the flash crash, brexit, and
| a host of highly volatile events resulting in massive
| market swings and this is absolutely unheard of. I've never
| seen a broker prevent its clients from buying shares or
| liquidating shares that are fully accounted for and pose no
| risk to the broker.
| rStar wrote:
| @Kranar exactly. the actions of the gme swarm are
| reasonable given the positions and the patterns of
| actions we all recognize from short sellers. until now,
| short sellers have pretty much been playing a game of
| poker where no one ever called their bluff. Of course,
| the short sellers that lost out on this can just blame it
| on covid and get bailed out.
| fnimick wrote:
| They're not reasonable. Just because someone has a short
| position doesn't mean you can stake a position
| deliberately to trigger a squeeze and profit from the
| result. That's exactly what the GME swarm has been doing.
|
| "Although some short squeezes may occur naturally in the
| market, a scheme to manipulate the price or availability
| of stock in order to cause a short squeeze is illegal." -
| https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/regsho.htm
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Robinhood and other brokers'
| compliance teams made the decision that the penalty for
| shutting down trading was less than the potential fallout
| for enabling illegal market manipulation behavior. Just
| because it's coordinated online between individuals
| doesn't mean that it's not illegal market manipulation.
| [deleted]
| rohan1024 wrote:
| This has happened in India previously with TikTok. Google
| removed the reviews to improve rating but in this case I think
| Google won't take any action.
|
| https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/google-remov...
| tinyhouse wrote:
| My guess is that Google will get involved. It's not the first
| time a mob is trying to destroy the rating of an app. But their
| rating before all of this drama is not going to last; that's
| for sure.
| vkou wrote:
| A stock trading app that encourages you to trade options, and
| then randomly(?) closes your positions should not only have a
| 1 star review, it should not be allowed to operate.
|
| Actually, given that RH is currently only allowing people to
| sell their positions, and not buy into them, the only correct
| step is for the app stores to only allow RH to be
| uninstalled, and to block any new installations. All for the
| financial well-being of their users, of course.
| josephorjoe wrote:
| It would seem Google should remove the app from the store
| since it does not do what it claims to do.
|
| An app claiming to be a stock trading app that doesn't allow
| trades for a NASDAQ listed stock isn't really a stock trading
| app.
| Miner49er wrote:
| It's honest reviews though? I had a 5 star rating on the app
| and loved it. After what they've done today, I am switching
| brokers, and changed my review to 1 star. I would honestly no
| longer recommend Robinhood to anyone.
| guerrilla wrote:
| By mob you mean the users who are justifiably upset the app
| is not working as expected by not allowing them to buy and
| forcing sales without user permission.
| slenk wrote:
| But the app is broken. They are not allowing you to buy
| shares. Why should an app that decides you can't buy certain
| shares, and they auto-sells some shares you own, be rated
| highly?
| afavour wrote:
| Robinhood was always owned by the same Wall Street fat cats
| its users hate. They even sell the data on what retail
| investors are buying in real time to allow industry
| investors to take advantage of it.
|
| If anything it's amazing that it took this long for anyone
| to notice.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Because many people on social media encourage other people
| to give the app 1-point rating. That's something Google
| need to protect against. The poor rating should happen
| organically. But regardless, they are fucked.
| bigtunacan wrote:
| What Robinhood is doing now is unethical and illegal. By
| limiting to users to only selling these stocks Robinhood
| is manipulating the market.
|
| Citadel is a major source of funding for Robinhood.
| Citadel owns Melvin Capital Management. Melvin Capital
| Management is on the hook for billions in losses for
| their GameStop shorts.
|
| How can it be more clear than this? People should be
| warned away Robinhood after this. Robinhood & Citadel
| should both be sued for manipulation of securities.
| imperio59 wrote:
| It doesn't get more organic than word of mouth.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Thousands (millions?) Of people lost money / opportunity
| because of the app. Then those people rate what they
| think of the app - that ir cannot be trusted to act in
| their interest.
|
| Why should Google protect them against consequences of
| their own decisions?
| justapassenger wrote:
| Do you expect that making money on the bubble should be
| quick and painless?
| craftinator wrote:
| Do you expect a trip down the highway will be free of
| highway robbery? It's called "highway robbery" for a
| reason... If you don't like it, stay off the highway!
| jwitthuhn wrote:
| I expect that a broker won't arbitrarily make certain
| stocks "sell only" and cancel buy orders that have
| already been submitted.
| rrsmtz wrote:
| Excellent point. This vote-mob isn't due to some
| extraneous BS like some other ones, it's a response to an
| unexpected and customer-hostile service restriction.
|
| I don't see how anyone could trust Robinhood with their
| money in the future.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| So because -company- does illegal thing and people
| respond by using whatever means they have Google should
| silence the masses of disaffected users just because some
| people changed their rating? That is some grade a:
|
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something
| when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
| -Upton Sinclair
| yuliyp wrote:
| A rating is not a thing that an app deserves. It's a
| datapoint published by an app store to help its users
| make decisions about which apps to use.
| recursive wrote:
| The one thing does not exclude the other.
| yuliyp wrote:
| Google doesn't care whether Robinhood succeeds or not. It
| cares whether people trust the Play Store ratings (and
| more broadly, trust the Play Store itself). They'll do
| what's needed to achieve their goals, not Robinhood.
| afiori wrote:
| it similar to how hacker news penalizes submission that
| rally for upvotes (specifically I remember a discussion
| about how posting links of your submission to twitter can
| penalize it)
| ttt0 wrote:
| As a user, I'd like to make sure that a trading app won't
| deny me the opportunity to actually make decent money.
| austincheney wrote:
| While vote flooding via some confined social circle is a
| form of trolling I don't think this case fits that
| criteria. This news isn't limited to a subreddit. This
| news is everywhere, suggesting any vote flood is more
| likely natural and organic than not.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I have no idea where this figure came from but Motherboard
| tweeted it was somewhere near half robinhood's users (had
| holdings in GME)
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/motherboard/status/13547982444553...
| boatsie wrote:
| Google will moderate/filter out the reviews. And then maybe the
| mob will go after Google and we will really see if David can
| harm Goliath.
| pgt wrote:
| I believe David can. If there is one industry in which a
| challenger can overthrow the incumbent, it is software.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Bowing to the whims of established trading firms to protect said
| firms being squeezed by a crazy army of day traders is a great
| way to ruin the rep your "Robinhood" trading app stands for.
| Score one for the little guy.
|
| I'm hoping RobinHood gets sued out of existence and many of these
| hedge funds burn. The industry's response to this is stupid and
| classist: "we can't have randos making money..." as irrational as
| the system is it is working as is.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Well earned.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| Robinhood phrased their message as if it was for user's own good.
| Moralizing everything beyond protocol and rules and law has
| serious consequences. It does nothing but driving people cynical.
| Didn't the elites learn the stories of USSR political jokes, the
| stories of how East Germans (and ancient Chinese people) talked
| to each other via eye contacts only? It's not hard to guess what
| will happen when enough number of people stop trusting the
| system. For that matter, I'm so glad that AOC and Td Cruz can
| agree with each other to probe Robinhood's practice.
| shostack wrote:
| Any links to good reading on the eye contact communication?
| That sounds really interesting.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| I don't know if there's any communication protocol with eye
| contact. People were so afraid of persecution that they used
| only eye contact to exchange feelings, or so I read. One may
| argue that it's different this time aforementioned
| persecution came from the governments. Well, it's worth
| remembering that it was ordinary people who voluntarily
| snitched each other during those horrible times, believing
| that they were on moral high ground. Or just ask Chinese: who
| beat professors and school principals to death? Who thought
| that business owners deserved to starve to death? Who thought
| eating flesh of person was righteous because that person was
| born in a middle-class family?
|
| It looks many Chinese have learned their lessons from their
| own painful history, yet Americans didn't even care about
| history at all.
| dheera wrote:
| EDIT: I was wrong, this was removed because it was a repost.
| However I wish the mods would say why it was removed.
|
| Justin Kan posted a tweet about this. I also tried to screenshot
| and post it to r/wallstreetbets but it got deleted by mods. The
| mods of r/wallstreetbets themselves are complicit in this.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetbetsnew/comments/l75z6o/m...
| ttt0 wrote:
| I get that people are pissed, but this is exactly the same
| thing that the Qanon idiots were doing - going along with the
| wildest theories and calling anyone who questioned them
| complicit. By doing so, they destroyed their entire movement
| and the cause they were fighting for.
| Armisael16 wrote:
| Your post was removed because it was like the thousandth time
| it had been posted. It's literally the #2 post on the subreddit
| right now:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l747eg/cita...
| dheera wrote:
| Okay, I was wrong, but in that case the UI should have said
| why it was removed.
| l3s2d wrote:
| Your post got removed because it's a repost:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l747eg/cita...
|
| Don't spread misinformation.
| [deleted]
| donohoe wrote:
| You're all free to rate it on iOS too...
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id...
| gshakir wrote:
| Already did
| newfeatureok wrote:
| I wonder what percentage of Robinhood users hold GME - if it's
| more than 25% I'd say they're finished. If we assume 25% of users
| hold GME and 80% of GME holders will not return after this fiasco
| that's extremely significant IMO.
|
| Not to say that they'll cease to exist, but I doubt they'll
| remain the "#1 trading platform."
| jzoch wrote:
| half of all americans invested in the market own some GME
| allegedly
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| in an etf or fund, maybe
| sschueller wrote:
| Didn't they want to expand to Europe sometime soon? I guess
| that is up in the air now after the regulators see this.
| spikels wrote:
| Can't find the link but I think I read earlier today it was
| much higher than 25%.
| Miner49er wrote:
| According to Motherboard it's more than half.
|
| https://twitter.com/motherboard/status/1354798244455395328
|
| EDIT: This is untrue, please refer to jaywalk's reply.
| mafuyu wrote:
| I think GME is one of the freebie stocks that Robinhood gives
| out as a referral bonus, so many of those users might just
| have had one stock incidentally.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| From what I understand Robinhood's actions today only
| impacted derivatives of GME, not trades involving the actual
| underlying equity (which, I imagine, is what most people
| actually own).
| wmeredith wrote:
| Nope. They stopped buying of the actual equity. All you
| could do was sell.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I can say with 99% certainty that they aren't just counting
| invidual $GME holders, but every one of Robinhood users that
| holds an ETF (like total US Market) that contains $GME...
|
| So this is really such a bad faith statement from
| Motherboard, because all of the ETF holders (probably 90% of
| the "half") can still sell their ETF's and thus their
| indirect $GME shares...
| whateveracct wrote:
| nothing like being disingenuous to ride the hype train
| jaywalk wrote:
| Although they've left the tweet up, the article it links to
| says that this is incorrect: "Correction: An earlier version
| of this article stated that 56 percent of Robinhood users
| hold GME stock. This is incorrect, based on a misreading of a
| statistic on Robinhood. Motherboard regrets the error."
| Miner49er wrote:
| Ah, I was unaware, nice catch.
| [deleted]
| im3w1l wrote:
| Can this really be true? It sounds so implausible that I'm
| not sure if I can take their tweeted word for it.
| sschueller wrote:
| Sort by newest ratings to see why.
| sneak wrote:
| Can someone who knows more about such things than I explain to me
| why their weird response to the situation (halting buying, but
| still permitting selling) was deemed by them to be the best of
| their options (the other two obvious ones being to temporarily
| stop dealing in those securities entirely (halting buying and
| selling), or to continue letting people trade them as they had
| the previous day)?
|
| It's confusing to me. I'd think if they were being risk-averse or
| something they'd have stopped dealing in them entirely until the
| craziness passed. The "you can only sell, not buy" part seems...
| odd to me.
| librish wrote:
| Preventing people from exiting an existing position is a much
| bigger deal than preventing them from entering a new one.
| Mtinie wrote:
| You can still close any positions you have open, as of 3 PM
| Eastern.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| In the simplest, likely potentially inaccurate explanation...
| Robinhood doesn't actually make the trades. They pay someone
| else to make the trades, add a small amount to the price, and
| that's how they get to 0$ trading price to the end user. The
| upstream party is refusing to do things, so Robinhood has no
| choice but to follow the rules that party set.
|
| That's like, way over simplified but gets to the gist
|
| [Edit cause spelling are hard]
| outoftheabyss wrote:
| Then why not communicate that in a diplomatic way. Their
| business and user base is at stake
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| When your marketing model is built entirely on sticking it
| to the man, how do you communicate that the man has you by
| the balls and you have no recourse because your business
| model is built on the man paying you off.
| vharuck wrote:
| You do this clearly, because if you don't give people a
| good explanation, they'll find one elsewhere. And the
| person giving that explanation probably doesn't care
| about preserving your reputation.
| a_t48 wrote:
| Halting buying and selling is even worst - it means that people
| are locked into owning GME even if it tanks to 0.
|
| (someone please correct if wrong)
|
| Edit: I know they haven't halted selling, this is directly in
| response to a part of the parent's comment
| stuff4ben wrote:
| They just halted buying and are still allowing closing out of
| your position.
| [deleted]
| stickfigure wrote:
| You mean people who bought a hot potato might be stuck owning
| it when the music stops? Make no mistake, the music will stop
| and _someone_ will be left holding it. Might as well be the
| folks holding it right now.
| Mtinie wrote:
| Buying was halted. Held shares can still be sold, if you so
| chose.
|
| That's what I'm seeing in RH when I look at the small amount
| of Blackberry (BB) shared I own.
| clusterfish wrote:
| If you sell it, someone gotta buy it. But buying on RH is
| blocked. They're just trying to crash the price.
| Mtinie wrote:
| Robinhood is one of many brokers. If you sell GME through
| RH, the buyer can come from anywhere.
| clusterfish wrote:
| First, RH aren't the only ones blocking GME purchases.
|
| Second, if popular trading platforms artificially block
| demand, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, and the
| stock is going to plunge by this action alone.
|
| Given Citadel's involvement, this is blatant market
| manipulation, and I hope people go to prison for this.
| Ftr, I never traded individual stocks, so I'm not
| affected, but this is still bullshit.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Citadel is a hedge fund that owns Melvin Capital Management.
|
| Melvin is a $GME short seller predicted to lose BILLIONS due to
| the people taking the free market back.
|
| Citadel owns the app Robinhood.
|
| Citadel banned purchases of new $GME shares on RH.
|
| Market manipulation.
|
| https://twitter.com/shane_riordan/status/1354786445668610049
|
| ^ quoted from here
|
| Ooops their correction here:
|
| https://twitter.com/shane_riordan/status/1354787975058616320
| beervirus wrote:
| Citadel doesn't own Robinhood.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Yeah, I keep seeing this claim posted that Citadel owns
| Robinhood, but I can't find any evidence to back it up. The
| Wikipedia pages for each don't mention the other.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| You should probably include the correction Shane made later:
|
| https://twitter.com/shane_riordan/status/1354787975058616320
|
| "Citadel isn't a majority owner of RH, but they DO pay RH a
| hefty figure to the app for consumer data. On top of the
| money paid to bail out Melvin.
|
| All they have to do is threaten to pull that money for data
| from RH and RH pulls new share purchases of $GME.
|
| It's wild."
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| I really don't think you'll get a good answer from anyone for a
| couple of days at least. This is quite unprecedented (not them
| halting buying of a certain stock, but the whole situation with
| its underlying context).
| rapsey wrote:
| Robinhood owners are the ones bleeding money from GME.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| It is very likely that their "upstream" partners asserted this,
| and Robinhood didn't have much of a choice. Their biggest
| mistake is probably the god-awful communication with customers
| about this decision.
| sgpl wrote:
| Another thing to note is that one of Robinhood's main
| investors from their last round, 'D1 Capital', is also down
| 20% this year [1] with a fund size of 20 billion, so that's a
| 4 billion dollar hole for them to recover from.
|
| I've only seen mention of Citadel but the short squeeze on
| these stocks (blocked stocks) continuing could literally have
| made D1 Capital explode.
|
| In the aftermath of this fiasco, perhaps Robinhood can get
| away with a small fine. Even a billion would be less than the
| collective sum all hedge funds involved could have lost had
| this upward price movement continued.
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-28/dan-
| sundh...
| bszupnick wrote:
| My understanding is that Robinhood didn't actually block these
| purchases but rather the service they use to buy/sell stocks
| blocked it called Citadel
|
| So it's not Robinhood, persay, but rather Citadel.
|
| Why did Citadel block purchasing of GME stock? Because Citadel
| just invested 2 billion dollars in Melvin Capital Management;
| one of the hedge funds that has a lot to lose as long as the
| GME stocks keep going up.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| I think this is possible, but do we know for a fact this is
| the case? Melvin claims they already got out of the GME
| trade. They could be lying, but they would open themselves to
| a lawsuit from investors if they were.
|
| I'm not sure if Citadel can just refuse to purchase GME (RH
| could just go elsewhere), but maybe they said they wouldn't
| pay RH anymore for order flow unless they blocked it. But do
| we know that Citadel did this? I've only heard speculation to
| that effect.
| clusterfish wrote:
| Melvin could have "gotten out" by selling their position to
| Citadel for all we know.
| 6nf wrote:
| The number of shares short is still the same as a week
| ago, about 70 million.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| RH could not just go elsewhere; moreover, they absolutely
| could not go elsewhere _today_. Handling order flow for
| automated transactions isn 't something you can find on
| short notice.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| I think they can go elsewhere. If Citadel can't beat
| national best offer, they are supposed to go with the
| national best offer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_best_bid_and_offer
| freeone3000 wrote:
| They don't do this. See
| https://nypost.com/2020/12/17/sec-slaps-robinhood-app-
| with-6... .
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| That's the rumor but there's no evidence to back it up.
| Melvin could've closed their GME positions days ago, in which
| case Citadel wouldn't be on the hook for any further price
| changes.
| ffggvv wrote:
| citadel only handles like 10% of their order flow. the rest
| is other companies. including Apex clearing which also
| handles it for Webull and other platforms that halted trading
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I smelled a rat in Robinhood back when they first showed up. When
| something goes from paid to free, the only appropriate response
| is to question how that happened, and what changes in motivation
| now exist.
| ziftface wrote:
| I'm learning recently to be a lot more critical about this sort
| of thing than I used to be.
| xxpor wrote:
| I'm surprised the app stores (well, at least the play store)
| don't have hysteresis built in to prevent mobbing the ratings,
| just in general.
| boojing wrote:
| Steam (the video game distribution platform) does "recent
| reviews" and "all reviews" so that you can tell if there has
| been a recent influx of positive or negative reviews.
| dheera wrote:
| This is not mobbing the ratings. They did something bad, and
| they are getting bad reviews for it. The review system is
| working as intended.
| xxpor wrote:
| I don't have a problem with _this specific case_ , I'm
| thinking of, for example, users of 2 different apps having a
| war with each other and going in and leaving negative reviews
| for the other app.
| bagacrap wrote:
| well since that's a totally different scenario it's weird
| that you bring it up in this thread.
| cromka wrote:
| Why would they? They just need spam protection. If legitimate,
| independent users vote them down in thousands then why would an
| app need a protection?
| dylan604 wrote:
| If a dev releases an update that breaks the app or
| fundamentally alters the behavior of the app, why should
| users not be allowed to offer an updated rating based on
| those changes. If ratings are due to some recent change, then
| of course it will naturally look like a swarm. Nothing
| nefarious about it. Any kind of artificial disruption of the
| users being allowed to post their review is artificially
| protecting the dev.
| ckastner wrote:
| What would be something positive about allowing mobbing?
| swirepe wrote:
| When it's positive, it's called "trending"
| ttt0 wrote:
| I don't know if that's a positive, but companies like
| Google often cave to the mob and the press demanding
| deplatforming of certain individuals. If they remove the
| ratings then that will just prove, once again, what their
| allegiances are. Except now a lot of people are watching
| really closely.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I consider review bombing a legitimate form of boycott.
|
| "BOYCOTT, the refusal and _incitement to refusal_ to have
| commercial or social dealings with any one on whom it is
| wished to bring pressure. "
| ckastner wrote:
| That is an interesting argument. My gut disagrees but
| purely rationally, I can't find any fault with it. This
| is something I will be pondering.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| It's strange that you're ignoring the fact that if an app
| does something bad that affects many users, those many
| users will, reasonably, review the app poorly. You're
| implying that all sudden influxes of bad reviews are
| somehow illegitimate, which is a confusing position.
| [deleted]
| ketzo wrote:
| Maybe an app committed a sudden, devastating action against
| _all_ of its users. That would be worth warning potential
| downloaders about, no?
| ckastner wrote:
| That (and the related sibling's comments) is a fair
| argument, but admittedly not what thought when I first
| pictured the term "mobbing".
|
| For anyone actually affected by Robinhood, I think
| leaving 1-star rating it is absolutely just.
|
| However, _mobbing_ , to me, is when the random internet
| gets out its pitchforks and finds something to dogpile
| on, even though they might not have been affected
| personally.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > For anyone actually affected by Robinhood, I think
| leaving 1-star rating it is absolutely just.
|
| Given the claims that (various high percentages above
| 50%) of RH users had one of these meme stocks, that
| should still drive the rating to 1-star.
|
| Especially if you also count everyone as "affected" who
| bought through another broker and who saw those shares
| plummet once RH destroyed retail "investor" (read:
| gambler) demand.
| ziftface wrote:
| I believe half of Robinhood customers own GME, so it
| isn't at all unreasonable for all of those reviews to be
| disgruntled users.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >even though they might not have been affected personally
|
| It's unrealistic to imply that people shouldn't share
| opinions of behavior if they weren't directly and
| personally affected by that behavior. You're also making
| a large assumption that cases you would define as
| "mobbing" consist of a significant portion of people
| unaffected.
| ckastner wrote:
| > _It 's unrealistic to imply that people shouldn't share
| opinions of behavior if they weren't directly and
| personally affected by that behavior._
|
| The thing about opinions nowadays is that they are
| manipulated right and left. It has become absolutely
| trivial to whip up a mob into a frenzy.
|
| This isn't to say that any concerted movement against
| something one was not personally affected by is
| illegitimate. Clearly, one does not need to be a person
| of color to support BLM.
|
| My question regarding the mobbing prevention was in the
| spirit of the first form.
| kstrauser wrote:
| In certain cases, it's deserved and appropriate. If an app
| is scammy and the majority of its users believes it's a bad
| app, it _should_ have its rating dropped.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It provides a more timely signal about an app's rating.
|
| In its absence, you'd have the Amazon effect -- accumulate
| five star volume, tank / exploit the product, coast as your
| average is very slowly dragged down.
| moolcool wrote:
| Literally this case
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Mobbing companies is completely fine and called boycotting.
| RH fucked up, now they must pay the price.
| remram wrote:
| Steam (video game store) has separate "reviews" and "recent
| reviews" summaries, so you will see something like "reviews:
| mostly positive, recent reviews: overwhelmingly negative". It
| is often informative, as updates can make a good game
| unplayable, riddle it with microtransaction, or servers can
| go offline.
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| Google Play also prioritizes the recent reviews, they have
| much more weight on the overall ranking.
| tikhonj wrote:
| It also really helps in the opposite direction. Games that
| had release issues but fixed most of them have mediocre
| overall reviews but positive recent reviews, and I've found
| that's a pretty good sign that a game is worth trying.
| Without that separation, it would be much harder for the
| game to get over its rocky launch.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| If Amazon did this, then it would solve the problem of
| grandfathered reviews from years ago being used to
| promote completely different inferior products. It would
| have saved me hundreds of dollars worth of returns.
|
| But Amazon has no incentive to do so, because they would
| sell less items. Maybe with Steam the target market of
| gamers can direct so much more backlash towards something
| that doesn't work than the general audience of Amazon.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Is there actual proof they colluded with Citadel, or is that just
| speculation? I'm very confused?
| noja wrote:
| Isn't there a front-running side to this story? With the front-
| runner pocketing billions? Isn't this how Robin Hood makes money?
| Anyone know?
| partiallypro wrote:
| The reason why this happened is that their clearing house stopped
| fulfilling their orders (totally out of their control,) but
| Robinhood bungled this so badly, I honestly wonder if they'll
| ever recover. WeBull had to do the same thing but they have a
| clear reason rather than "protecting investors" etc.
| itsyaboi wrote:
| Riddle me this, who is Robinhood's clearing house?
| [deleted]
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is new as of today - but to close
| (deactivate) your robinhood account, you need
|
| 1. No outstanding trades 2. a $0.00 balance 3. Contact support
| and (optionally?) give a reason
|
| (1) and (2) make sense, but is (3) new?
|
| I wonder if there is a mass exodus - there should be.
| pram wrote:
| I'd wait to get your tax docs before you do this though, lol
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| They explicitly state those will still be available even if
| your account is deactivated.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Seems fair. The app has rendered itself useless.
| rvnx wrote:
| Not only they cheated their own users, they also artificially
| manipulated the market and that eventually defrauded users of
| other brokers who legitimately expected a buy pressure coming
| from Robinhood users.
|
| So, 1-star is even too much, jail time would be preferred.
| ziftface wrote:
| I don't know what the next step is, but the fact that pretty
| much everyone knows that there will be no jail time despite
| them openly committing crimes to defraud so many people isn't
| going to lead us somewhere good.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| It's not even that it rounds to 1 star, it's actually 1.0 stars
| (according to the aria-label on the HTML). The difference between
| a 1.4 and 1.0 is _huge_ in terms of what percent of reviews are
| actually favorable.
| gshakir wrote:
| It has five stars on Apple store, that's quite a difference
| pelasaco wrote:
| today early in the morning, they had a 4.8 rating
| https://twitter.com/VincentMarcus/status/1354812744738828294...
| archon810 wrote:
| That isn't the Play Store.
| tomcam wrote:
| Still too high
| avipars wrote:
| What about on the apple app store?
| linksen wrote:
| Don't worry, google knows how to obscure these things. Just look
| at the voting on Biden's inaugural youtube videos. One day tens
| of thousands of down votes. Next day just a few thousand.
|
| source: https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-scrubs-thousands-of-
| dislik...
| rcruzeiro wrote:
| Source?
| linksen wrote:
| https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-scrubs-thousands-of-
| dislik...
| _jal wrote:
| The source is their need to belong to a group that treats
| asserting a belief in this horse shit an in-group shibboleth.
|
| Much like religious groups that use exposure to non-believers
| as ways to discourage defection, ridicule from outsiders
| helps keep them in the fold.
| linksen wrote:
| The source was provided with links to the web archive.
| Please tell me how it is wrong.
| kibwen wrote:
| Youtube routinely scrubs views, likes, and dislikes from
| videos based on attempts to discern if they're
| fraudulent. You can't believe that this is evidence that
| Youtube is conspiring to support Biden unless you also
| believe that Youtube is conspiring to suppress BTS, the
| famous K-Pop boy band: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-
| YouTube-delete-views-from-BTS-...
| Triv888 wrote:
| I didn't down-vote them yet, because I used to use only the web
| app and haven't use them in a while, but I will make sure to
| down-vote.
| fireeyed wrote:
| There should be zero stars available for scamsters. Seriously
| this should be an option. Why should anyone give one star to a
| scamming firm Robbing Hood which has colluded with their backer
| Citadel. They have derogatory term for Retail Investors - Dumb
| Money. Now the 'Dumb Money' has figured out the the hedge
| funds'rigged game.
| afavour wrote:
| > Now the 'Dumb Money' has figured out the the hedge
| funds'rigged game.
|
| After everyone threw a ton of money into the market the hedge
| funds control. "Dumb money" doesn't feel like an inappropriate
| nickname.
| nostromo wrote:
| This is a pet peeve of mine about star ratings.
|
| Visually, allowing 1 to 5 stars inflates the way ratings look,
| because the first star is always present, even for the worst
| products.
|
| Imagine if it was pie chart or a bar chart: the lowest rating
| would look like 20%, not 0%.
|
| Or imagine a product where 50% of people gave it the lowest
| rating (1 star) and the rest gave it the highest rating (5
| stars). This would be presented as a 3/5 star item, which
| visually appears quite a bit better than its real rating (50%).
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah but if I see 0 stars the result is that I'm assuming
| that there were no votes.
| ttymck wrote:
| Many platforms I have seen (Amazon Prime Video comes to
| mind) use:
|
| **** (XX,XXX votes)
|
| when displaying ratings (meaning average 4 star rating, for
| XX,XXX total votes) -- it is succinct and informative.
| amelius wrote:
| In that case, I might assume that the website uses
| white/gray stars instead of yellow ones to denote a
| higher score.
| mrlala wrote:
| In practice you would never have 100% be 0 stars if there
| was any significant number of ratings.
| ttymck wrote:
| Why can you not normalize the scale to 0-4 stars?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's a consequence of the UI pattern - when you use the
| same widget as indicator and input, you need some way to
| represent "no vote yet" - plus, it would be hard to click/tap
| "no stars". It could be done better but alas, minimalism is
| the name of the game.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please review the site guidelines and stick to the
| rules when posting here? They include:
|
| " _Please don 't fulminate._"
|
| That means please don't post comments in which indignation
| overwhelms information. That lowers signal/noise and escalates
| activation in others, which takes us away from curious
| conversation.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| anm89 wrote:
| When retail in traders en masse decide that a trading platform is
| impinging upon their rights, the SEC should be obligated to open
| an investigation. Isn't this pretty much a major component of
| their intended purpose?
| ritchiea wrote:
| I've been reading WSB since yesterday and while I understand
| the outrage about blocking trading. They started blocking
| trading with $GME trading in the $400's, and a slew of
| redditors on WSB, Discord & Telegram pushing penny stocks. It
| started out a crusade against the hedge fund shorting $GME and
| quickly turned into rallying dumb money to pump and dump penny
| stocks. Looking at the direction things were going it seems
| like Robinhood acted responsibly in cutting off the buys of
| AMC, BB, NOK, etc. They're all stocks that have been propped up
| artificially in the last 48 hours based on the hype and
| attention generated by the Gamestop story.
|
| No one serious thinks Gamestop stock is worth $400+. Robinhood
| cut off buying at the point when unsophisticated investors were
| caught up in a stampede to "stick it to the man." Seems like
| they did the right thing.
| snarf21 wrote:
| What about the people that are trying to double down to
| protect their long position? What about the money they will
| lose? Either the market is efficient or it isn't.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| > Robinhood acted responsibly
|
| No. This is against the Free Market hypothesis. We are
| supposed to let the Dumb Money get into the market, fail out
| and learn their lesson.
| tome wrote:
| What's the Free Market hypothesis?
| shrimpx wrote:
| Wall Street is/will be having a ball with the new
| administration desperate to keep the market "stable".
| Stable == deliberately and slowly bled by hedge funds.
| s_dev wrote:
| "This is Wall-street Dr. Burry, if you offer us free money,
| we're going to take it"
|
| Absolute nonsense. The exchange is protecting the trader from
| himself!!
|
| The exchange is designed to make money selling and buying.
| There is no reason they would stop either unless some big wig
| made a phone call.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Robinhood doesn't make money on trades - they make money
| off of commisions paid to them by high frequency traders.
| Basically there's some time between when I place an order
| and when a stock actually gets purchased. In that time, the
| price may change a bit. High frequency traders can buy at
| slightly lower prices than I could, and can sell at
| slightly higher prices than I could, so they can profit the
| difference without me noticing. Some of this excess gets
| paid to robinhood as a sort of finders fee.
|
| Over many stocks and long periods of time, this works quite
| well. However the system breaks down if everyone is trying
| to buy the same heavily manipulated stock.
| adoxyz wrote:
| Should Robinhood be an arbiter of what is a reasonable trade
| and what people can spend their money on? Because if so, they
| have a lot of restricting to do to keep people safe...
| [deleted]
| shrimpx wrote:
| I have a bit of knowledge from friends who work in fintech, and
| the sentiment among fintech companies seems to be that SEC
| doesn't matter. The fine is small and comes way too late. You
| can simply account for an approximate future fine and move
| forward with your shady business.
| silexia wrote:
| This will probably be my least popular post ever, but the
| explanation needs to get out there for why Robinhood stopped
| trading on GME.
|
| Selling a stock short is NOT illegal. It is a perfectly valid
| type of investment according to the SEC:
|
| "D. Are short sales legal? Although the vast majority of
| short sales are legal, abusive short sale practices are
| illegal. For example, it is prohibited for any person to
| engage in a series of transactions in order to create actual
| or apparent active trading in a security or to depress the
| price of a security for the purpose of inducing the purchase
| or sale of the security by others. Thus, short sales effected
| to manipulate the price of a stock are prohibited."
|
| Basically - you can't short sell a stock to manipulate the
| price down so you can buy a lot more of it later. If you
| believe a stock is overpriced and short sell it, that is
| legal. That is exactly what tons of retail traders and hedge
| funds do every day, including on Gamestop.
|
| On the other hand, manipulating a stock price upwards to
| cause a short squeeze IS illegal according to the same SEC
| article:
|
| "Although some short squeezes may occur naturally in the
| market, a scheme to manipulate the price or availability of
| stock in order to cause a short squeeze is illegal."
|
| Unprecedented numbers of people on Reddit, Twitter, and
| elsewhere collaborated to intentionally create a short
| squeeze on GME in the last week. No one talked about a
| fundamental case why Gamestop the company was worth a lot of
| money and would be successful in the future; instead everyone
| made the argument that due to a very high short interest of
| 100%+, that a short squeeze would send the price "to the
| moon". That is illegal according to the SEC.
|
| Multiple brokerages, especially Robinhood, probably had their
| attorneys tell them that "Hey, you are aiding and abetting
| illegal activity by enabling a short squeeze and could be
| liable criminally or civilly if you continue to allow this
| blatant illegal activity on your platform". So they decided
| to stop it by only allowing people to close their positions
| rather than open new ones in support of the short squeeze.
|
| Another strong reason is that if the short squeeze caused the
| GME stock to go to 5000 in a sudden leap, tons of traders
| (both retail and professional) could instantly go broke, and
| then the brokerage (Robinhood) would be left holding the bag.
| For example, picture a retail investor with a Robinhood
| account had sold call options in the amount of $100,000 and
| their account was worth $200,000. If the price gapped from
| 300 to 5000 and those options were exercised, that trader
| could have a loss of $10,000,000. He would lose the value of
| his account, $200,000... but the brokerage would have to make
| up the rest of the settlement and take a loss of $9,800,000.
| Now multiply that by thousands of accounts.... no brokerage
| wants to take the risk of being bankrupted, so they shut it
| down.
|
| The two strong reasons Robinhood and other brokers stopped
| trading was to prevent legal liability from enabling illegal
| activity on their platform, and for wanting to avoid
| potentially massive banktuptcy from traders unable to cover
| their losses.
| thestu wrote:
| Assuming this is all true, it still just feels like they're
| picking winners, which is probably the thing that's going
| to matter more than anything else going forward. People can
| and will point to a laundry list of rules violations by
| institutional investors (is a 140% short of a stock
| completely and unambiguously within the rules?) that show
| the hypocrisy of the little guy getting screwed.
| silexia wrote:
| They aren't picking winners, they are avoiding lawsuits
| for allowing illegal activity on their platform. Short
| squeezes are illegal. You can see people collaborating
| all over WSB to create short squeezes, most frequently
| using the Robinhood app.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l594yg/g
| me_...
| defen wrote:
| > For example, picture a retail investor with a Robinhood
| account had sold call options in the amount of $100,000 and
| their account was worth $200,000. If the price gapped from
| 300 to 5000 and those options were exercised, that trader
| could have a loss of $10,000,000. He would lose the value
| of his account, $200,000... but the brokerage would have to
| make up the rest of the settlement and take a loss of
| $9,800,000. Now multiply that by thousands of accounts....
| no brokerage wants to take the risk of being bankrupted, so
| they shut it down.
|
| That's why every brokerage has a risk department. If you're
| a brokerage and you let thousands of customers write
| uncovered GME calls, you deserve to lose all your money and
| go out of business. Simple as that.
| silexia wrote:
| Exactly. So the risk department told them to shut down
| trading till things were saner.
| defen wrote:
| Brokerages do not have a fiduciary duty to prevent
| customers from losing their money in bad trades. It's one
| thing to shut down margin trading or even possibly
| options purchases, but to not allow people to buy a stock
| with their own money is pretty bad. There is zero risk to
| the brokerage there.
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| > If the price gapped from 300 to 5000 and those options
| were exercised, that trader could have a loss of
| $10,000,000. He would lose the value of his account,
| $200,000... but the brokerage would have to make up the
| rest of the settlement and take a loss of $9,800,000.
|
| What if the price of a stock went from $300 to $5000 for
| legitimate reasons, perhaps due to some technological
| breakthrough. The exact same situation would happen. Would
| shutting down trading also be justified?
| FiberBundle wrote:
| Well I think probably most of the people on wsb have no
| idea what they're doing, those that trade on margin are
| extremely reckless and irrational. Having said that I still
| find absolutely ridiculous and highly corrupt that they
| solely stopped buy orders. If you stop trading that's
| reasonable, but to cap this off on one side and allow
| Wallstreet to make up for losses is unacceptable.
| silexia wrote:
| Robinhood's platform was allowing illegal activity - many
| people had come out publicly [0] saying they were
| attempting a short squeeze on GME which is illegal.
| Robinhood is extremely vulnerable to lawsuits for
| enabling that activity if they did not take action.
|
| 0- https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l594y
| g/gme_...
| FiberBundle wrote:
| Do you have a source for why that is illegal?
| gizmondo wrote:
| Robinhood stopped people from purchasing a stock without
| margin, so I don't buy your second reason.
| vga805 wrote:
| Wrong. The bull case was made for GME as far back as late
| 2019, and it gained momentum this year.
|
| Nothing different than Jim Cramer talking up a stock on
| CNBC every fucking night.
|
| Edit: I know this because I watched a youtube video from a
| popular redditor named deepfuckingvalue a few weeks ago and
| bought into the thesis fully as a value investment. He goes
| under the name RoaringKitty on youtube.
|
| I lost multiple years worth of salary this morning when
| RobinHood decided to stop selling GME.
| silexia wrote:
| I am sorry to hear about your losses, but that does not
| disprove my explanation. I also am a member of WSB and
| read all the top posts. I think most of them make the
| argument to hold the position as a short squeeze is
| coming, and very few of them argue the stock is truly
| worth a ton of money. Very few people actually believe a
| company that sells video games the same way Blockbuster
| sold movies has a lot of potential.
| Majromax wrote:
| > Wrong. The bull case was made for GME as far back as
| late 2019, and it gained momentum this year.
|
| That argument was made last year and early this year. The
| argument this _week_ has been that the stock price will
| increase specifically because of a short squeeze, and the
| popular comment on WSB has been that buying and /or
| holding GME stock is a rebellious act that will cause
| that short squeeze to happen.
|
| If deliberately causing a short squeeze constitutes
| illegal market manipulation, then at least some of the
| WSB comments advocate for going over that line. On the
| other hand, the SEC would probably have its hands full
| linking these comments to actual trades that were
| meaningful enough to move the stock price -- SEC rules
| aren't written with a horde of enraged small-dollar
| investors in mind as the culprits.
|
| Notice that RoaringKitty has taken profits from his GME
| holdings over the past few weeks, most recently about two
| days ago, and has _not_ continued buying into the stock.
|
| > I lost multiple years worth of salary this morning when
| RobinHood decided to stop selling GME.
|
| With all due respect, GME has been a highly speculative
| play for at least this entire week. It's not a good idea
| to speculate with money that you can't afford to lose.
| vga805 wrote:
| So what? I know it's a highly speculative move. I know
| it's absurd to buy this stock at this price. But we
| should be allowed to. (Obviously not on margin).
|
| I don't really think the market should allow for this
| sort of thing. I agree with you there. But that's how the
| rules are written, and now when the little guy figures
| out the rules they shut it down.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| I'm curious how you would justify the valuation.
|
| GME is trading at between 4x and 8x it's all time high in
| 2008. The graph of the stock price basically looks like a
| flat line until a few days ago where it dramatically
| spiked to far, far more than it's previous peak.
|
| Are you saying that GME will actually be worth it's
| current stock price a year from now? Why is that?
| [deleted]
| bagacrap wrote:
| um, _buying stocks_ is not a scheme to manipulate the
| price. However disabling purchases of a stock for millions
| of users does artificially suppress demand.
|
| Also robinhood doesn't allow selling naked options so that
| entire point of yours is moot.
| silexia wrote:
| Interactive Brokers does allow naked selling of options,
| and also shut down trading probably for similar reasons.
| Robinhood could lose money in any number of ways if a
| stock gaps and some of it's customers go bankrupt.
|
| If you buy or sell stocks with the intent to manipulate
| the price (either through a pump and dump scheme, or a
| short squeeze scheme) that is illegal. It doesn't matter
| whether the action is only buying or only selling. It is
| the intent.
| racl101 wrote:
| > Isn't this pretty much a major component of their intended
| purpose?
|
| Reminds me of the scene in the _The Big Short_ where the hot
| chick in the pool who currently works for the SEC (at the time)
| is in town in Vegas for a conference hoping to run into some
| Wall Street banker dudes so she can schmooze and float her
| resume to them. And it 's not a conflict of interest.
| alangibson wrote:
| The SEC has led the charge of government agencies away from
| anything that could reasonably be called regulation. Take note
| of how often the term 'oversight' is used vs 'regulation' when
| these guys are talking.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Last I checked, the SEC doesn't pay very well compared to
| financial law / trading...
| alangibson wrote:
| There are lots of skilled but civic minded people in all
| the three letter agencies. The problem isn't people, it's
| ideology. Namely market fetishism and the assumption that
| if you're rich you just know better.
| anm89 wrote:
| Yeah, I assume in reality, this is essentially the exact
| opposite what is happening. I would imagine the SEC is
| involved behind the scenes in coordinating these shutdowns.
|
| That feels like a huge violation of their stated intent
| though.
| totalZero wrote:
| > how often the term 'oversight' is used vs 'regulation' when
| these guys are talking.
|
| Is that how we're determining efficacy now...? Semantics?
|
| I take it that you like FINRA because of the R in the name.
| alangibson wrote:
| What? My point is that they see themselves as mall cops
| observing and reporting, not actively regulating behavior.
| That makes a pretty big difference in efficacy.
| totalZero wrote:
| What you said was that they often use the word "observe"
| rather than "regulate," and that this is somehow
| reflective of the way they do their jobs. That's a purely
| semantic viewpoint and a ridiculous way to judge the
| efficacy of any regulator.
|
| In actual fact, they use the term "enforcement action."
| Here's their report from 2020. See for yourself:
|
| https://www.sec.gov/files/enforcement-annual-
| report-2020.pdf
| dmurray wrote:
| I think we can be certain the SEC will open an investigation.
| They don't generally work in real time though.
| grezql wrote:
| when such unjust is done to the mass, this may just spill over to
| violence. If I were RH/Melvin/Citadel, I'd watch over my
| shoulders.
|
| SEC needs to intervene quick
| Aperocky wrote:
| I feel like this action from Robin Hood saved a lot of retail
| trader from self harm.
|
| A lot of people are clinging to the hope that whatever came out
| of shorts covering their position being false. Whereas given the
| volume of the previous days it's highly likely they've already
| gone. Whoever goes in at this point is likely going to end up
| losing everything.
| shrimpx wrote:
| More importantly it saved hedge funds like Melvin and Citadel
| form self-harm. They aggressively shorted these stocks into the
| ground, looking to make billions. If the prices stay up or keep
| going up, they stand to lose billions and even go out of
| business.
|
| If you look at r/wallstreetbets, only a few people seem to have
| invested more than a couple of tens of thousands. The guy who
| came up with this idea to profit off of short squeeze seems to
| have invested only 53k. Most other people invested a few
| hundred or a few thousand. Also, people on r/wallstreetbets
| routinely show screenshots of their losses. It's kind of
| preposterous to move forward assuming these people don't know
| what they're doing, and Robinhood saved them...
|
| These trading platforms are blatantly intervening to save the
| hedge funds, not the Reddit traders. Government may have a say
| in it, too, because they want market stability. And if these
| hedge have to sell their long positions to cover shorts, it
| could put a big dent in the market and even cause a larger
| scale crash.
| bagacrap wrote:
| how would that cause a crash? Retail (and less shady
| institutions) will buy more aapl when it dips and all that's
| happened at the end of the day is a big transfer of wealth
| from institutions to retail (and less shady institutions).
| jxf wrote:
| This is interesting in that it provokes the question of what an
| app's rating "means". Clearly, if you were getting the app
| because you expected to be able to trade GME and you can't, then
| this is a good signal not to get the app. But not all "protest
| votes" of this sort may be equally good signals.
| dpedu wrote:
| Is the algorithm that does or doesn't promote apps on the app
| store able to differentiate between "protest votes" and "real"
| votes?
| bmcahren wrote:
| I would argue most of the 1 star reviews are users like myself
| feeling betrayed who are speaking with their dollar, share, and
| review votes by leaving the app entirely.
| brador wrote:
| Could we see a class action? Is there a case?
| moolcool wrote:
| https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1354839676482367488
| jandrese wrote:
| The class action has already been filed against Robinhood. It
| remains to be seen if it gets any traction.
| elliekelly wrote:
| It won't. Everyone who has an account at RH has contractually
| agreed not to bring or participate in a class action suit and
| has contractually agreed to arbitration.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The case appears to be filed here:
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/50143052/nelson-v-robin...
|
| Scanning the complaint quickly... it's not a strong case. The
| problem plaintiffs have is that the contract they signed lets
| Robinhood essentially refuse to trade if it wants to. In order
| to defeat that, you're going to have to argue that those
| contract provisions violate federal law and are therefore
| unenforceable. That's not really want the complaint does.
| Instead, it seems to argue that Robinhood's error was in
| failing to allow trades in GME in the first place, not in the
| reasoning for its failings. (At least they actually allege
| enough of this to potentially get discovery, which is better
| than some other complaints I've seen recently).
| dang wrote:
| For pointers to other vertices of this story graph, see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25933543.
|
| The current thread is paginated like all the other big threads
| (to spare our poor server--yes, we're working on it). If you want
| to see all the comments you'll need to click through the More
| links at the bottom, or like this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947697&p=2
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947697&p=3
|
| (and so on)
| dang wrote:
| (This is a stub reply so I can collapse the various comments
| responding to this, so as not to distract too much from the
| topic at hand. (Sorry, non-JS users.))
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Thank you!
| imdsm wrote:
| The HN server has been so faithful to us. I hope it's feeling
| better soon.
| anton96 wrote:
| You can also add YouTube-dl and GitHub.
| dang wrote:
| You mean to comments about Robinhood on those sites? Links
| would be helpful.
|
| Edit: I don't think I'm following you.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| What exactly is the issue? (if you can share)
| dang wrote:
| HN's application server runs on a single core.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%20%22single%20core%22%20by:d
| a...
| burgerquizz wrote:
| How many simultaneous visitors can HN handle with that
| single core?
| the_arun wrote:
| Where can I find HN backend architecture?
| killjoywashere wrote:
| probably a reasonable starting point:
| http://arclanguage.org/
| [deleted]
| shadykiller wrote:
| I had already transferred all my stocks from Robinhood to my
| company provided Fidelity account sometime back after reading
| about their shady practices last year:
|
| https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-321
| xmly wrote:
| The only reason they still have one start is because 1 is
| minimum.
| devops000 wrote:
| They could have blamed the SEC, and the users would have hated
| the SEC instead of them.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Not allowing users to purchase shares and also selling owned
| shares against the wishes of users will have that effect.
| [deleted]
| kimsant wrote:
| Once again, the power of a phone call to the right person, asking
| for the right thing and offering the right compensation.
| jb775 wrote:
| Serious question: Since RobinHood is a private company, does the
| "if you don't like it, you can build your own platform" argument
| apply here? Or does that only apply selectively when it benefits
| partisan politics?
|
| This is the natural evolution when censorship as we've recently
| seen is given a pass.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Robinhood can do whatever it wants and people can in response
| give it a 1 star rating. They can also complain about it not
| being a good platform to use. Freedom goes both ways.
|
| You can also complain about Twitter or give its app a low
| rating or just stop using it.
| postsantum wrote:
| Technically, anyone can do whatever they want but go to jail
| later
| randompwd wrote:
| > Robinhood can do whatever it wants
|
| Is that in it's terms of service?
| proto-n wrote:
| No it doesn't apply. If you are dining in a restaurant and it
| starts putting cocaine into your coffee, that's still very
| illegal, regardless of whether you can choose another
| restaurant.
|
| One sided halting in a moment like this reeks of market
| manipulation, which is illegal.
| Layke1123 wrote:
| I believe this is different because the SEC is involved, and if
| the SEC involved decides to rule that a broker cannot limit
| what stocks can be bought or sold because that would break the
| legal definition of what a brokerage is.
|
| Does anyone know the law well enough to know if this is indeed
| a violation of any statutes?
| dcolkitt wrote:
| There's no law whatsoever that says a brokerage has to trade
| all stocks.
| mathnmusic wrote:
| But there's a law against manipulating stocks.
| zionic wrote:
| That's just it though, Robin hood didn't delist gamestop.
| They just decided arbitrarily that their users are only
| allowed to sell it. Coincidentally, this is a move that
| highly benefits a major partner of theirs.
| nv-vn wrote:
| That connection is like 3 degrees of separation at best,
| though. Robinhood sells order flow to a number of market
| makers, one of which is Citadel Securities [1]. Citadel
| Securities is part of the Citadel group, which consists
| of a hedge fund (Citadel LLC) and a market making firm
| (Citadel Securities LLC) [2]. While both companies are
| owned by Ken Griffin and share many resources, they are
| split by a "Chinese Wall" [3] to prevent any conflict of
| interest between both sides of the firm. They also have
| different CEOs, management, employees, infrastructure,
| etc. as a result of this. Now, Citadel (the hedge fund)
| has invested $2 billion into Melvin Capital, which is one
| of the firms central to the whole issue [4]. Yet Melvin
| Capital has already closed its position in GME [5], which
| means that they no longer have a vested interest in the
| performance of GME.
|
| There are several glaring problems with the theory that
| Citadel is pushing for Robinhood to ban buying GME for
| financial motives:
|
| 1. Robinhood has NO relationship with Citadel LLC
|
| 2. Everybody knows about the theoretical conflict of
| interest between Citadel/Citadel Securities so it is
| incredibly unlikely that Citadel Securities would risk
| doing anything to help Citadel in such a high profile
| scenario (i.e. the SEC/FINRA would be able to find out
| this kind of thing very quickly and very easily)
|
| 3. Citadel has no financial motive to stop trading of
| GME, because Melvin Capital has no financial motive to
| stop trading of GME
|
| 4. If it was as simple as trying to profit off of GME
| going down, why would they bother halting trades on other
| securities (AMC, BB, NOK, BBBY, etc.)?
|
| This article does a really good job at explaining the
| situation (much better than I can do) [6]
|
| [1] https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHF%
| 20SEC%2...
|
| [2] https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20170203/NEWS
| 01/1702...
|
| [3] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chinesewall.asp
|
| [4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/citadel-point72-to-
| invest-2-75-...
|
| [5] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gamestop-melvin-
| idUSKBN29...
|
| [6] https://finance.yahoo.com/video/heres-why-robinhood-
| restrict...
| temp wrote:
| > _Yet Melvin Capital has already closed its position in
| GME [5], which means that they no longer have a vested
| interest in the performance of GME._
|
| Melvin Capital also said a day earlier that they do not
| give out comments on their positions and trading.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-melvin-fund-evotec-de-
| idU...
|
| Since the claim that they closed their position in itself
| would potentially influence the market to their benefit,
| I don't see a reason to trust their statement.
| derision wrote:
| In fact there are a number of stocks that robinhood doesn't
| list, namely CEFs and others
| Layke1123 wrote:
| Sure, not listing a stock is entirely different than only
| allowing a user to sell a listed stock.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| There are dozens of trading platforms, and RH isn't the only
| major one that offers free trades.
|
| I expect that a lot of RH users are going to do some research
| and discover that there are alternatives that are just as good,
| or even better.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Obviously the argument applies. Retail are aiming to punish
| them by no longer using them. It's freedom.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| I mean, doing something that will have a significant effect on
| markets is manipulation, which is regulated by the sec. It does
| apply, but it won't change. The only way to prevent this is
| removing the intermediaries, which events like this are pushing
| people towards.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Holy shit, I can't believe people are comparing RH to Twitter,
| retail investment and corrupt hedge funds to people inciting
| violence against election results.
|
| FWIW, this is an app in a supposedly regulated sector, making
| the call to affect stock prices and cut retail investors out of
| the market and causing a stock to tank.
| StriverGuy wrote:
| This is a bit of a dense question - but being shut out of
| trading a stock doesn't physically threaten someones life. So
| not exactly analogous to the twitter situation you are clearly
| alluding to.
| jackfoxy wrote:
| Most of the other brokerages (Schwab, Etrade, and TD Ameritrade,
| but NOT Fidelity and Vanguard according to the reports I am
| getting) are participating. According to the rumor on Reddit
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassActionRobinHood/comments/l723k...
| the call came from the White House.
| abstractbarista wrote:
| Schwab made GME non-marginable on 1/13. You can buy GME with
| your _own settled cash_ on Schwab just fine. It has been
| tested.
| ehsankia wrote:
| The crazy rumors aside, at least this whole mess has clarified
| for me which brokerages to give my business to and which ones
| to boycott. It is the free market afterall, and people will be
| choosing with their $$$ which ones to support and which ones to
| boycott. The 1 star rating, while a bit extreme, also is part
| of the same idea.
|
| You also kinda had it coming when you called yourself "robin
| hood" and then immediately bent over the moment the slightest
| challenge appeared.
| jklein11 wrote:
| It looks like I can still buy with my Schwab account?
| rcstank wrote:
| I'm able to purchase these securities on ETrade just fine.
|
| Edit: Just called E*TRADE. They now don't allow GME nor AMC
| trades unless you're closing your position.
| 542458 wrote:
| I wouldn't give that rumour any serious thought considering
| there's literally nothing backing it up and it mostly just
| feeds what people already want to believe.
|
| People are pointing out in the comments that some of the
| details don't line up, like him being based in the wrong city
| and him overhearing conversations while WFH.
| kibwen wrote:
| For real, despite three years of QAnon people are still
| failing miserably to apply any incredulity about whatever
| they read on the internet. That it affirms their beliefs is
| all that matters, never mind its veracity.
| [deleted]
| jklein11 wrote:
| In the words of Joe Biden, that rumor is pure malarky. I saw
| Vladimir on CNBC this morning in what looked to be his home.
| Unless the "low-level computer science" person was in the
| founders home, it seems very unlikely he "overheard" a convo
| with the White House. It seems like a dog whistle to me.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| The CEO of the Nasdaq suggested it yesterday:
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/nasdaq-ceo-suggest...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > According to the rumor on Reddit
|
| Well, there's a reliable source.
| csours wrote:
| This reminds me of how casinos can kick people out for any reason
| or no reason at all. Treat meme stocks like a trip to the casino:
| don't wager more than you can lose.
| [deleted]
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