Discord bans server tied to Reddit stock surge page

by Celine Castronuovo - 01/27/21 8:05 PM ET

Online messaging platform Discord on Wednesday banned the r/WallStreetBets (WSB) server, which became the center for discussions among amateur online traders who fueled an unexpected surge in GameStop’s stock this week.

A Discord spokesperson confirmed in a statement to The Hill that the decision to remove the server was due to users sharing “hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings,” adding that it “did not ban this server due to financial fraud related to GameStop or other stocks.”

“The server has been on our Trust & Safety team’s radar for some time due to occasional content that violates our Community Guidelines, including hate speech, glorifying violence, and spreading misinformation,” the spokesperson added.

The statement went on to say, “Discord welcomes a broad variety of personal finance discussions, from investment clubs and day traders to college students and professional financial advisors. We are monitoring this situation and in the event there are allegations of illegal activities, we will cooperate with authorities as appropriate.”

This comes after Discord in the days after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol banned a server called “The Donald,” a pro-Trump community linked to banned subreddit r/The_Donald and TheDonald.win.

Discord at the time noted the ban was due to the pro-Trump server’s “overt connection to an online forum used to incite violence, plan an armed insurrection in the United States, and spread harmful misinformation related to 2020 U.S. election fraud.”

The WSB server has seen increased attention in recent days as amateur investors among the subforum’s 3 million users caused stock in GameStop, a video game retailer struggling even before the coronavirus pandemic, to jump to $347 per share Wednesday.

Overall, GameStop’s share price has risen over 1,800 percent in January.

While the stock market as a whole took steep losses Wednesday, shares of theater chain AMC rose 302 percent, the holding company used to liquidate Blockbuster Video’s assets rose 120 percent, Nokia rose 38 percent and BlackBerry rose 33.4 percent.

While most of these companies have particularly struggled financially recently, thousands of amateur traders have targeted them with trading apps such as Robinhood.

Users on Twitter noted Wednesday that the WSB server largely descended into chaos amid the stock surges, with The Verge Senior Editor Tom Warren sharing a video in which messages are coming in rapidly and users can be heard talking over each other simultaneously.