Wow, this does read like a populist screed. I'm surprised at Persuasion, frankly. The simplistic analysis of "insider vs. outsider"? And his reading of events is bolstered by the agreement of right populist Cruz and left populist Ocasio Cortez. Let's ignore what the broad center thinks about it all? I'd check out Matt Yglesias' section on gamestop in his article https://www.slowboring.com/p/good-vaccines. Or read this careful account at https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/the-gamestop-bubble/. And for Pete's sake can we please stop equating everything that happens with social media kicking people off their platforms.
The description of what happened with Robinhood is irresponsibly poorly framed and explained. They had both very legitimate requirements for their own well being independent of any entanglements with insiders to do what they did AND it was clearly in the interest of their users who at that point not only could not count on their buys executing at anything near the share price when they placed the order but were likely to lose their shirts as the stock's elevated price was sure to collapse eventually and they were getting in late. The optics were terrible but the decision was extremely defensible and need not involve any corruption. Implying otherwise - which the context of this piece in my opinion does - is poor judgement.
Strained comparisons abound. here. But if there is any relevance to recent political events in this GameStop experience, it's not little guy vs. big guy but a willful contest of alternative facts. Is this stock worth as much as we (my crowd) can will it to be worth or is its value to be eventually determined by its performance in a marketplace of many, larger crowds demanding verifiable results?
And to add a new analogy to the mix: I spent a lot of time studying and betting on horse races in my youth. Hot tips and insider information were the currency of the game. But, once the race was run, there were no alternative results, just one, verifiable at the cashier's window.
This is similar (the betting is pari-mutuel) and different (the race has no finish line). But, unless tired horses can run forever, this will not end well for the bettors, no matter whether big guys or little guys are ahead at the quarter pole.
I appreciated the article, in my ignorance of the past week and WallStreetBets, and it enlightening me on this front. I like underdogs and working 60 hour weeks and not having all the time I would like to research everything in the world of politics and our country am inclined to jump on the bandwagon here, of the writers take. I do take exception to the writers downplaying the Big Lie about the election being stolen, understanding he is referencing the need for those in power to buy into it, but 70% of the GOP voter base believes it and that is a problem.
Also, a previous commenter indicated they were surprised at Persuasion, as if Persuasion is responsible for the content of every article. My draw to Persuasion is the fact that we can hear everyone's side here and hopefully not just the left or just the right. Thank you!!
I signed up for Persuasion and Matt Taibbi's substack around the same time, as a way to support non corporate journalism. The respective comment sections on this topic, really shows the difference in the readership.
One: social media is toxic. Most people I've seen on the mainstream platforms became worse for wear over time. I deleted my accounts to save my sanity. HOWEVER, if you're going to censor for spreading for misinformation you'd need to delete 90% of the users on these platforms as nearly everybody is spreading some sort of half truth. Censorship is clearly applied with an agenda.
I'm not a day trader. But the writer's argument seems patent. The reddit traders knew what they were doing, they were prepared to lose to money. The only ones not prepared to lose money were the hedge funds, and big tech colluded with the gatekeepers, to keep the established order.
This incident has made me aware that my retirements savings... in fact nearly everyone's retirement savings are invested in what amounts to a gambling operation. And it's the only game in town. There is no other system. I think the reddit traders deserve applause for showing us what's really happening.
The article raises a number of interesting points about censorship. However, I think it goes astray when it starts trying to use the Big Lie as a lens through which one can better understand the forces at play.
"After the storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6, we heard a lot about the “Big Lie” perpetrated by Trump and his allies that the election was “stolen.” In reality, this narrative never got far. It was rejected by the media (including Fox News), thrown out by the courts, labeled by social networks as “disputed,” and dismissed by politicians, including Trump’s own vice president. Yes, some far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers came to Washington to commit acts of violence, but they were roundly denounced. For a Big Lie to be successful, it has to have buy-in from the people in power, moneyed interests, the narrative-framers in the media generally, all of whom have to benefit from the lie and therefore repeat it."
This analysis is unconvincing; at best, it significantly exaggerates the extent to which the narrative "never got far." I would suggest that the Big Lie of election fraud instead is an argument against Mr. Sacks' thesis: despite the dearth of buy-in by the elites, better than two thirds of the Republican party believed the lie. So many believed the Big Lie that the elites at the top of the Republican party were unwilling to gainsay their outsiders -- they *listened* to the outsiders. They listened to the outsiders and not the insiders, the moneyed interests and the media.
Further, I'm no expert on the full breadth of Fox News' content, but outside their news division, it didn't seem like they "rejected" the Big Lie. The most popular parts of Fox -- the opinion content, not the news -- was very sympathetic to the Big Lie (when they weren't outright amplifying it). Far from not listening to the outsiders, Fox frequently pandered to them.
The more I think about this, the more I think the Big Lie simply doesn't reflect the insider vs. outsider theory that Mr. Sacks uses to focus on censorship, to connect the GameStop manipulation by Robin Hood et al to the censoring reaction of social media to the Big Lie because they are not analogous. The Big Lie very much did enjoy powerful insider support; perhaps not from social media (eventually), and not from news media (mostly), but it certainly did from some popular news media, from over 100 congresspeople, and from the President of the US. I would hardly call the Big Lie an outsider.
For what it's worth, I share much of the trepidation about the kind of power those who run our social media have; yes, they own it, so they are free to manage it as they please. However, they are also natural monopolies with the attendant network effects, and should be regulated as such. I'm not sure what I think the limits of censorship should be.
Both buyers and sellers of GameStop are speculators, not interested in the intrinsic worth
of that stock. The "kids" who piled in on the attack could afford to lose their money, but they got a good education, while they were studying for their College Exams. (A slight exaggeration, but not much.) The slicing and dicing of legitimate stocks is the real "crime" here. I really want to have announcers say that "SPECULATORS (!) drove the market up today... (or down. Not INVESTORS!) These players don't care about the stock itself. The company got its money from the IPO and other stock offerings not from speculators yoyoing the price. High-level execs of a company do profit from the stock's movement, but that's a different story....
Strained comparisons abound. here. But if there is any relevance to recent political events in this GameStop experience, it's not little guy vs. big guy but a willful contest of alternative facts. Is this stock worth as much as we (my crowd) can will it to be worth or is its value to be eventually determined by its performance in a marketplace of many, larger crowds demanding verifiable results?
And to add a new analogy to the mix: I spent a lot of time studying and betting on horse races in my youth. Hot tips and insider information were the currency of the game. But, once the race was run, there were no alternative results, just one, verifiable at the cashier's window.
This is similar (the betting is pari-mutuel) and different (the race has no finish line). But, unless tired horses can run forever, this will not end well for the bettors, no matter whether big guys or little guys are ahead at the quarter pole.
My response will be short because I have read the two comments in front of mine and they are dead on. This is a trivial event and is broadly interesting mostly because most people have no idea what is going on, how to contextualize it, and whether it is important. Brief answer — it is not important.
I am, shall we say, unpersuaded. A conspiracy of insiders who never talk and never turn on each other? Like all other large conspiracies, implausible in the extreme. "Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allowed far more content advocating for and planning the Capitol riot than Parler"? I read the link (okay, I skimmed it) and didn't see that claim backed up.
Catherine Rampell would include David Sacks as among those "cosplay[ing] as Robespierre." I recommend "GameStop is not a morality tale. People's life savings are at stake" in the Washington Post.
It's a bit hard for me to understand your claim that trump's Big Lie didn't gain traction. In survey after survey, we find that a majority of Republicans a) don't see Biden as the legitimate president and b) justify violence in defense of their ideology.
The rest of the article as persuasive. But you shouldn't sugarcoat the truth about Trump's Big lie to get people there.
It’s clear that the “insiders” (whether they’re political and/or money power insiders) are feeling the heat from social media’s exponential enablement of collective action. For a rag-tag bunch of day traders to bankrupt supposedly sophisticated hedge fund managers says a lot, but for the hedge fund managers to then have the juice to kick over the game says way, way more....
Hats off to the WallStreetBets guys... they saw a vulnerability and successfully exploited it....
P.S. look for the “power insiders” to get the SEC and Exchanges to significantly curtail open position reporting requirements. This will all be done under the Orwellian banner of ensuring the smooth operation of our financial markets free from short-term manipulation...
This was a lot less about Reddit, GameStop, short sellers, collusion, market manipulation, etc. Than I had hoped for at the outset. It's a lot more about another story. Therefore, it was disappointing to me.
Wow, this does read like a populist screed. I'm surprised at Persuasion, frankly. The simplistic analysis of "insider vs. outsider"? And his reading of events is bolstered by the agreement of right populist Cruz and left populist Ocasio Cortez. Let's ignore what the broad center thinks about it all? I'd check out Matt Yglesias' section on gamestop in his article https://www.slowboring.com/p/good-vaccines. Or read this careful account at https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/the-gamestop-bubble/. And for Pete's sake can we please stop equating everything that happens with social media kicking people off their platforms.
The description of what happened with Robinhood is irresponsibly poorly framed and explained. They had both very legitimate requirements for their own well being independent of any entanglements with insiders to do what they did AND it was clearly in the interest of their users who at that point not only could not count on their buys executing at anything near the share price when they placed the order but were likely to lose their shirts as the stock's elevated price was sure to collapse eventually and they were getting in late. The optics were terrible but the decision was extremely defensible and need not involve any corruption. Implying otherwise - which the context of this piece in my opinion does - is poor judgement.
Strained comparisons abound. here. But if there is any relevance to recent political events in this GameStop experience, it's not little guy vs. big guy but a willful contest of alternative facts. Is this stock worth as much as we (my crowd) can will it to be worth or is its value to be eventually determined by its performance in a marketplace of many, larger crowds demanding verifiable results?
And to add a new analogy to the mix: I spent a lot of time studying and betting on horse races in my youth. Hot tips and insider information were the currency of the game. But, once the race was run, there were no alternative results, just one, verifiable at the cashier's window.
This is similar (the betting is pari-mutuel) and different (the race has no finish line). But, unless tired horses can run forever, this will not end well for the bettors, no matter whether big guys or little guys are ahead at the quarter pole.
I appreciated the article, in my ignorance of the past week and WallStreetBets, and it enlightening me on this front. I like underdogs and working 60 hour weeks and not having all the time I would like to research everything in the world of politics and our country am inclined to jump on the bandwagon here, of the writers take. I do take exception to the writers downplaying the Big Lie about the election being stolen, understanding he is referencing the need for those in power to buy into it, but 70% of the GOP voter base believes it and that is a problem.
Also, a previous commenter indicated they were surprised at Persuasion, as if Persuasion is responsible for the content of every article. My draw to Persuasion is the fact that we can hear everyone's side here and hopefully not just the left or just the right. Thank you!!
I signed up for Persuasion and Matt Taibbi's substack around the same time, as a way to support non corporate journalism. The respective comment sections on this topic, really shows the difference in the readership.
One: social media is toxic. Most people I've seen on the mainstream platforms became worse for wear over time. I deleted my accounts to save my sanity. HOWEVER, if you're going to censor for spreading for misinformation you'd need to delete 90% of the users on these platforms as nearly everybody is spreading some sort of half truth. Censorship is clearly applied with an agenda.
I'm not a day trader. But the writer's argument seems patent. The reddit traders knew what they were doing, they were prepared to lose to money. The only ones not prepared to lose money were the hedge funds, and big tech colluded with the gatekeepers, to keep the established order.
This incident has made me aware that my retirements savings... in fact nearly everyone's retirement savings are invested in what amounts to a gambling operation. And it's the only game in town. There is no other system. I think the reddit traders deserve applause for showing us what's really happening.
The article raises a number of interesting points about censorship. However, I think it goes astray when it starts trying to use the Big Lie as a lens through which one can better understand the forces at play.
"After the storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6, we heard a lot about the “Big Lie” perpetrated by Trump and his allies that the election was “stolen.” In reality, this narrative never got far. It was rejected by the media (including Fox News), thrown out by the courts, labeled by social networks as “disputed,” and dismissed by politicians, including Trump’s own vice president. Yes, some far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers came to Washington to commit acts of violence, but they were roundly denounced. For a Big Lie to be successful, it has to have buy-in from the people in power, moneyed interests, the narrative-framers in the media generally, all of whom have to benefit from the lie and therefore repeat it."
This analysis is unconvincing; at best, it significantly exaggerates the extent to which the narrative "never got far." I would suggest that the Big Lie of election fraud instead is an argument against Mr. Sacks' thesis: despite the dearth of buy-in by the elites, better than two thirds of the Republican party believed the lie. So many believed the Big Lie that the elites at the top of the Republican party were unwilling to gainsay their outsiders -- they *listened* to the outsiders. They listened to the outsiders and not the insiders, the moneyed interests and the media.
Further, I'm no expert on the full breadth of Fox News' content, but outside their news division, it didn't seem like they "rejected" the Big Lie. The most popular parts of Fox -- the opinion content, not the news -- was very sympathetic to the Big Lie (when they weren't outright amplifying it). Far from not listening to the outsiders, Fox frequently pandered to them.
The more I think about this, the more I think the Big Lie simply doesn't reflect the insider vs. outsider theory that Mr. Sacks uses to focus on censorship, to connect the GameStop manipulation by Robin Hood et al to the censoring reaction of social media to the Big Lie because they are not analogous. The Big Lie very much did enjoy powerful insider support; perhaps not from social media (eventually), and not from news media (mostly), but it certainly did from some popular news media, from over 100 congresspeople, and from the President of the US. I would hardly call the Big Lie an outsider.
For what it's worth, I share much of the trepidation about the kind of power those who run our social media have; yes, they own it, so they are free to manage it as they please. However, they are also natural monopolies with the attendant network effects, and should be regulated as such. I'm not sure what I think the limits of censorship should be.
Both buyers and sellers of GameStop are speculators, not interested in the intrinsic worth
of that stock. The "kids" who piled in on the attack could afford to lose their money, but they got a good education, while they were studying for their College Exams. (A slight exaggeration, but not much.) The slicing and dicing of legitimate stocks is the real "crime" here. I really want to have announcers say that "SPECULATORS (!) drove the market up today... (or down. Not INVESTORS!) These players don't care about the stock itself. The company got its money from the IPO and other stock offerings not from speculators yoyoing the price. High-level execs of a company do profit from the stock's movement, but that's a different story....
Strained comparisons abound. here. But if there is any relevance to recent political events in this GameStop experience, it's not little guy vs. big guy but a willful contest of alternative facts. Is this stock worth as much as we (my crowd) can will it to be worth or is its value to be eventually determined by its performance in a marketplace of many, larger crowds demanding verifiable results?
And to add a new analogy to the mix: I spent a lot of time studying and betting on horse races in my youth. Hot tips and insider information were the currency of the game. But, once the race was run, there were no alternative results, just one, verifiable at the cashier's window.
This is similar (the betting is pari-mutuel) and different (the race has no finish line). But, unless tired horses can run forever, this will not end well for the bettors, no matter whether big guys or little guys are ahead at the quarter pole.
Dead on. Thank you.
My response will be short because I have read the two comments in front of mine and they are dead on. This is a trivial event and is broadly interesting mostly because most people have no idea what is going on, how to contextualize it, and whether it is important. Brief answer — it is not important.
I am, shall we say, unpersuaded. A conspiracy of insiders who never talk and never turn on each other? Like all other large conspiracies, implausible in the extreme. "Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allowed far more content advocating for and planning the Capitol riot than Parler"? I read the link (okay, I skimmed it) and didn't see that claim backed up.
Catherine Rampell would include David Sacks as among those "cosplay[ing] as Robespierre." I recommend "GameStop is not a morality tale. People's life savings are at stake" in the Washington Post.
It's a bit hard for me to understand your claim that trump's Big Lie didn't gain traction. In survey after survey, we find that a majority of Republicans a) don't see Biden as the legitimate president and b) justify violence in defense of their ideology.
The rest of the article as persuasive. But you shouldn't sugarcoat the truth about Trump's Big lie to get people there.
Mr. Sacks: Very good article.
It’s clear that the “insiders” (whether they’re political and/or money power insiders) are feeling the heat from social media’s exponential enablement of collective action. For a rag-tag bunch of day traders to bankrupt supposedly sophisticated hedge fund managers says a lot, but for the hedge fund managers to then have the juice to kick over the game says way, way more....
Hats off to the WallStreetBets guys... they saw a vulnerability and successfully exploited it....
P.S. look for the “power insiders” to get the SEC and Exchanges to significantly curtail open position reporting requirements. This will all be done under the Orwellian banner of ensuring the smooth operation of our financial markets free from short-term manipulation...
This was a lot less about Reddit, GameStop, short sellers, collusion, market manipulation, etc. Than I had hoped for at the outset. It's a lot more about another story. Therefore, it was disappointing to me.