Steve Huffman CEO, Reddit, comments on ‘Redesigning Reddit’ during the third day of Web Summit at Altice Arena on November 8, 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Horacio Villalobos | Corbis | Getty Images
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman will tell members of Congress Thursday that no significant activity on the company’s online community WallStreetBets was driven by bots or foreign agents last month, according to a copy of his prepared comments.
The US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee hearing comes after the WallStreetBets community triggered a trading phenomenon that drove GameStop stock up 400% in a week, up to $ 483 a share. As trading volume skyrocketed, online trading platform Robinhood was forced to temporarily suspend trading GameStop and other hot stocks in order to meet its clearinghouse deposit obligations, preventing some traders from realizing profits and triggering at least one lawsuit.
GameStop closed on Wednesday at $ 45.94.
“We have since analyzed the activity in WallStreetBets to determine whether bots, foreign agents or other bad actors played a significant role. They have not,” Huffman will testify, according to a statement of his planned remarks. “In every metric we checked, activity in WallStreetBets was well within normal parameters and moderation tools worked as expected.”
Huffman will testify alongside Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin, Melvin Capital Management CEO Gabriel Plotkin, and Keith Gill, who goes through DeepF —— Value on Reddit and Roaring Kitty on YouTube.
“WallStreetBets may look sophomoric or chaotic on the outside, but the fact that we are here today means that they have managed to raise important issues about fairness and opportunity in our financial system,” said Huffman. “I’m proud that they used Reddit for this.”