Each one of those bans can be explained as WSB being a victim of their own success. None of these companies have a compromising financial connection to Melvin Capital in the same way that Robinhood did.

For example, the WSB Discord was basically such a trainwreck that the WSB mod team themselves admitted they had significant problems keeping it under control. We can extrapolate that to Facebook as well. Hell, the WSB mod team even locked /r/WSB for a few hours to try and figure out a moderation plan. Most online platforms either rely heavily on community moderation (Discord, Reddit) or a small army of employee moderators that have to be rotated out frequently for the sake of their own mental health. Neither of these models work well for an already-rowdy community suddenly 10xing themselves in both scale and frequency of rules violations. It's basically uncontrollable and the only option is to shut it all down until you have a chance to cool off. (Again, that's why /r/WSB was locked yesterday.)

As for Google, they took a third approach: heavy automation. They have shittons of antispam systems specifically targeted to prevent review spamming. A sudden burst of 100k negative reviews from legitimate users angry that they can no longer participate in a financial flash mob is technically indistinguishable from someone who bought and compromised 100k accounts and decided to threaten Robinhood with negative reviews. Your antispam system isn't going to understand context (e.g. Robinhood fixing the books in a particular direction) but it is going to understand timing.

There isn't really a good way to handle this. The null option of "do nothing and let the problem fester" isn't a good option. This is because people will figure out that WSB is the server/subreddit/group you go on in order to break the rules and get away with it. Anyone with a chip on their shoulder about platforms having any sort of moderation rules will deliberately spam these corners of it, and normal people will assume that such behavior is now OK because there's no enforcement. This will spill over into other corners of the platform until everything is as bad as the lowest common denominator. (See also: what happens to subreddits as they grow, the entirety of 4chan, etc)

As is nearly always the case with these types of conspiracy theories, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

More charitably, you can explain most of these actions (maybe excepting Robinhood's actions) by the mods of these platforms and locations being roughly as surprised by things as Melvin Capital.

On the other hand, you could just allow free speech and expression, a strategy that has worked extremely well in western civilization for at least the last 500 years.

For instance, I have no problem with letting Nazis present their views - it only makes them look as ridiculous as they actually are, and tyranny by Nazis is no better than tyranny by Socialists/Communists, so reasonable people who are not ignorant of history should strongly oppose both. (Although, arguably, the Nazis were far less effective at killing millions of people than the Communists were...)

This is pretty much it rather than coordinated tech action. I support WSB and am not even remotely a Trumper but what happened to Parler was a much better example of a Big Tech shut down.

I enjoy listening to Greenwald's impassioned rants on the topic, with arguments in favor of freedom of speech and examples of what can go wrong historically. There's an interview/conversation with Unherd / Lockdown TV that's of particular interest on the topic.

so link it then.

Here you are:

https://youtu.be/MSVNm7XbnYA

Until Google does something else I'd give them a pass. Steam, for example, will give you more information about the reviews to avoid brigading.

I'm more inclined to believe Google is trying to head brigading off. When they start being more active however ... then we can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt.

But I'm 100% with you wrt Discord/FB.

I would hesitate from calling WallStreetBets or Reddit the 'little guy'. That's the part that gets me about this story. Both sides are immoral and wrong in manipulating the market and both sides have committed the crime of market manipulation.

You are totally misinformed. To bet against people who took too much risk is exactly what the market should do. Not immoral and its not manipulation at all. The problem isn't the betting of either side the problem is that one side de-facto can not loose (the current situation is an exception and it needs to be seen how much they actually lost in the end). They either get bailouts or get almost "unlimited free" loans to keep going until the tides turn and profits cover previous loses. This is actually manipulation. No matter who bets and on what, a fair free market would liquidate the losers, end of the story. The problem is that the losers in this case aren't actually legally allowed to lose that money because they gamble with other peoples money. Nonetheless they should be liquidated and the rightful owner should sue them and what not but ultimately they have to take the lose. To give your money to someone so they make more is in itself a bet that comes with a risk. Just because someone lost your money in a possible illegal way doesn't mean you have the right to get it back. If I give you 100 bucks and you steal it instead of multiplying it you are a criminal but I still have to bear the lose. Hedge fund and other financial institutions should not be treated differently.

When we look back on past injustices, there is almost a feeling of ridicule. As if we can't imagine how can those people fall for someone who says he (almost always a he) is appointed by god and bear so much of his bullshit for that. It is not victim blaming, but just barely so. It's a massive surge of disbelief, and an accompanying faith that no, those days are over now. We are better than this now.

Only we aren't, and we are still soaking up massive shitloads of inqueqlity and blood-boiling rule-bending like the good folks we are. For reasons that are, for all practical purposes, exactly like "god says I can", only this god is called "the free market". Slightly less superstitious, but no less unreal or stupid as the old thing. It's amazing how much you can get depressed thinking about the sheer "same shit different day"-ness of human civilization.

I guess I don’t understand why manipulating the market is immoral if you’re open and honest about it the way wsb was.

I think both sides are doing the same thing and pointing fingers at each other. That's my point. Market manipulation is just that, whether it's done by a privileged class on their iPhone 11s (i.e. the Reddit mob) or Hedge fund managers.

A privileged mob on reddit armed with Macbook pros does not equal the people sticking it to the man.

Reddit itself is part of the oligarchy everyone is railing against.

I don’t think you answered my question. I don’t disagree it’s market manipulation, and I agree no one is “sticking it to the man” here (though I’m always happy to see hedge funds lose 20 billion).

What I’m asking is why market manipulation is a bad thing, as long as it’s happening out in the open and everyone trading GME knows it’s a manipulated stock.

The same way a coup can be immoral and wrong even if you lie upfront about it. It's abusive and destructive.