[HN Gopher] Robinhood now has a 1-Star rating on the Google Play... ___________________________________________________________________ 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] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-28 23:01 UTC)