NOT YOUR ROBIN HOOD: GAMESTOP AND PLATFORM ECONOMICS AT PLAY

Abstract

In January 2021, GameStop and AMC, stocks with no discernable reason for an increase in value, rose abruptly in price. This was soon understood as the result of manipulation by members of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit. While individualized stock trading is often framed as equalizing the playing field, everyday people remain second-class participants in the stock market, which quickly became clear as trading was suspended on stocks the Redditors targeted. Backlash against this decision played out across platforms. We argue that this incident is the inevitable result of treating platforms (and economics) through the lens of gaming and trolling. The first key issue in the r/WallStreetBets incident was content moderation, as the Robinhood trading app stopped the trading, the subreddit the traders used to organize went private, and the corresponding Discord server was banned. The second important factor in this incident was coordinated inauthentic action, as thwarted traders immediately turned to the app store and targeted Robinhood with a review bombing campaign. Third, while the popular response to the r/WallStreetBets saga was frequently celebratory, seeing their actions as a challenge to capitalism and evidence of progressive politics, longstanding tropes associating Jewish people with capital, meant that Redditors’ anti-capitalism slid easily into anti-Semitism. Ultimately, many of the patterns of the Reddit stock incident locate it in a long history of coordinated internet action steeped in toxic technocultures. However, the expansion of these practices into taking direct action on economic systems worth billions of dollars is new and calls for rigorous attention