Tesla boss Elon Musk accused group chat app Discord of “going corpo” after it banned a Reddit group that sparked a massive rally in Gamestop, AMC and other previously unloved stocks.
WallStreetBets, a Reddit chat room for retail investors, was removed from the Discord gaming messaging service this week amid a massive surge in strong short-short stocks that have beaten billionaire hedge fund managers.
“Even Discord has disappeared …” Musk tweeted.
On Thursday, Discord denied that WallStreetBets – whose members had relied on Discord to chat in real-time – had been banned for financial reasons, but instead “still allowed hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings”.
Discord said WallStreetBets had been on the radar for “ a while ” for content violations and issued multiple warnings before it was banned.
Millions of new members have flocked to WallStreetBets’ Reddit page in recent days after Musk posted a link to the group on Twitter on Tuesday, writing, ‘Gamestonk !!’
In his Discord tweet, 49-year-old Musk referred to video game Cyberpunk 2077 in which players choose three ‘life paths’ for their character: Corpo, Streekid or Nomad, associating Corpos with ruthless commerce.
One of Musk’s Twitter followers asked if he was Streekid or Nomad. He replied, “Nomad”, a clan that values family above all else.
“Discord welcomes a wide variety of personal finance discussions, from investment clubs and day traders to students and professional financial advisors,” the company said in its statement. “We are monitoring this situation and if there are allegations of illegal activity, we will cooperate with the authorities where necessary.”
During its epic rally, GameStop’s stock was up more than 1,700 percent. Following Wednesday’s shopping spree, brokers such as Schwab, TD Ameritrade and Robinhood restricted trading on GameStop, AMC and other stocks touted by WallStreetBets members.
Since the stock trading madness, the White House and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been watching the situation.
Two years ago, Musk was in the SEC’s crosshairs after his online activities wreaked havoc on the markets.
He was fined $ 40 million after tweeting that he could take Tesla privately for $ 420 a share – a substantial premium to the trading price – which Musk denied was inspired by a pot joke.