Just look at the title of this post. These people have no shame.
Yes, there was that thread and a few smaller ones that recently popped up that suddenly seem to be pushing a sentiment shift.
Personally, to me, it feels like a contrived effort to change the consensus, one that is definitely supported by the mods there.
The mods have banned many individuals that spoke up against them, and from very early on have deliberately muddied the waters around Plan vs Book. Now that most of the opposition has been removed from the sub, they are not only pushing once again the apparent benefits of being enrolled in Plan, but at the same time are also attempting to discredit heat lamp theory and the notion that shares should be in pure DRS Book.
it wouldn’t really be worth caring what the mods over there are doing if it didn’t feel like they were deliberately trying to control and redirect the community towards a consensus that suits them over a consensus that is best for the community. I tend to believe these days that the superstonk mods are working in the interest of some agenda that is not the community’s agenda.
i ask myself rhetorical questions like: cui bono? Who benefits, if a certain idea was the accepted consensus over some other idea?
If I was a short hedge fund, or a member of a cartel of short hedge funds and other participants that opposed GameStop’s success, and i saw that superstonk was this place where hundreds of thousands of individuals are investing in GME and discussing information that is against my interests, against my dangerous short position liability that could destroy me, I would do everything in my power to destroy that place. In any way that I could. Externally, I would discredit them. Internally, I would try and infiltrate Reddit so as to get more control from the very top. I would deploy an army of shills into the subreddit (and other subreddits) to try and spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt, every day. I would use my army of shills to spread negativity and cynicism towards any person or any idea that advances the interests of GME investors, and I would use my army to spread apathy and demoralization. I would use my army of shills to target individuals of prominence, “thought leaders”, and use the report button every time they make a post or comment. Eventually, these reports will be noticed by the mods or the admins, and they will respond by silencing or permabanning that individual for being a squeaky wheel.
I would try very hard to control the consensus, to direct GME investors away from anything that might help them. If I could get 1, or more, or all of the mod positions under my control, this would give me the ability to ban entire discussions and narratives and groups of people that stand in the way of my mission to destroy GameStop.
Eventually, when all of the independent thought leaders have been silenced, and all of the fun has been sucked out of the place, and engagement is way down, and the rules are so generic and restrictive that they can be used to eliminate any discussions that I don’t like, I would then proceed to replace organic conversations with the contrived narrative that I want to enforce on everyone. I would use my captured mod positions as a source of authority. With multiple mod positions I can silence my opposition and replace their ideas with my own, and I would at the same time use my army of shills to boost the signal that my mods are putting out.
I doubt there’s even too many people left there. But we need to keep reaching out to them. Also it would be nice to have some of the daily posts and activity here (like the starfish for ex.).
I think there are still many people there, just that engagement is way down. While some people are proactive and highly motivated, probably most people are not proactive and not highly motivated. Superstonk is the place where most of it has happened, and superstonk is where most of it continues to happen for now. Many people can’t be bothered to check out Lemmy when prompted, and many of those that do, can’t be bothered to go through the tremendous amount of effort that they perceive it takes to sign up.
Much of the momentum of the whole movement has dissipated. Early 2021 there was an enormous amount of excitement and energy, and most of that got put into superstonk. Since then, Superstonk and Reddit have slowly but surely increased friction on us, to the point that many people have clearly lost interest in engaging. As for me personally, though I am not (yet) banned from superstonk, I haven’t posted or commented there in months, because I might as well be already banned. I don’t even want to engage there, the mods have sort of ruined it for me. While there are far fewer people here on Lemmy, I much prefer to post and and discuss here because this community is hosted by DRSd shareholders of GME, for the purpose of other GME shareholders to talk about GME. My interests are in alignment with the hosts of the community, and on Reddit, that is simply not the case.
I’ve said this before but I’ll keep saying it: I believe the best path forward is to create the engagement here that you want to see. Make this community a desirable place to be, make this community a naturally superior alternative, so that every time reddit or superstonk makes things a little bit worse, and people there start talking about migrating, you take that opportunity and send those individuals a DM to show them this Lemmy instance, and of those that take the energy to actually take a look, what they will hopefully see is a proper GME community that is available to them outside of Reddit’s limits.
Right now we are still very early. Superstonk is only ~ 2.5 years old, and it is starting to decay in a major way. What will another 2 years look like? How much more decay will Superstonk go through before becoming a totally unrecognizable shell of the flourishing community it once was? In my ideal future we’ll have 5, or 10, or 100 Lemmy (and other fediverse) instances, all owned and operated by DRS’d shareholders of GME, and we’ll never need to worry about a corrupt mod team or Reddit’s permission again.
Great thoughts here and the message resonates with me on a personal level - specifically the concept that Reddit as a platform does NOT have the same goals and motivations of the people who use it for community.
It takes effort to make posts and comments and provide your perspective on the posts and comments of others. That effort is worth it in many cases because users often share common interest with their fellow users, and everyone can benefit from that.
This effort, however, should be placed on a solid foundation. At a ground level Reddit does not share the same goals and can choose to limit the ability to engage and assemble at any time at it’s own discretion. I feel it’s so important to remember that as we continue building our own space using open source and community hosted platforms like this one.
