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The Courts

Founder of WallStreetBets, Which Helped Ignite Meme Stock Frenzy, Sues Reddit (reuters.com) 108

Posted by BeauHD from the one-year-later dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The founder of WallStreetBets, which has been credited with helping ignite investors' frenzy into "meme" stocks, sued Reddit on Wednesday, accusing it of wrongly banning him from moderating the community and undermining his trademark rights. Jaime Rogozinski said his ouster, ostensibly for violating Reddit policy by "attempting to monetize a community," was a pretext to keep him from trying to control "a famous brand that helped Reddit rise to a $10 billion valuation" by late 2021.

According to the complaint filed in federal court in Oakland, California, Rogozinski applied to trademark "WallStreetBets" in March 2020, one month before his ouster, when the community reached 1 million subscribers. Founded in 2012, the community now has 13.6 million subscribers. "If you build it, they will come," the complaint said, quoting from the 1989 movie "Field of Dreams. "Reddit's dreams, however, turned out to be Mr. Rogozinski's nightmare as the company insists, 'if you build it, we will take it from you.'" Rogozinski said he is a dual U.S.-Mexican citizen, and lives in Mexico City. He is seeking at least $1 million in damages for breach of contract and violations of his publicity rights, and a ban on Reddit's use of WallStreetBets unless it reinstates him as senior moderator of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit. Reddit rejected Rogozinski's claims. "This is a completely frivolous lawsuit with no basis in reality," a spokeswoman said. "Jamie was removed as a moderator of r/WallStreetBets by Reddit and banned by the community moderators for attempting to enrich himself. This lawsuit is another transparent attempt to enrich himself."
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Founder of WallStreetBets, Which Helped Ignite Meme Stock Frenzy, Sues Reddit More

Founder of WallStreetBets, Which Helped Ignite Meme Stock Frenzy, Sues Reddit

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  • lol whut? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @09:16AM (#63297939) Homepage
    This would be like me suing /. for being modded down. Doesn't matter that he was a moderator or even originator of a forum - he was not an employee just another user with moderation - which tried to monetize a channel which is apparently barred by their terms of service.

    I guess this dude made enough money in their pump schemes that now he can waste it on lawyers. Must be a nice situation for him, congrats.

    • It is a far stretch from being modded down to being kicked off a site, as here.

      Slashdot does the former, Reddit does the latter on the whims of their shitty, vindicative, woke moderators. No working appeal process.

      • It is a far stretch from being modded down to being kicked off a site, as here.
        Slashdot does the former, Reddit does the latter on the whims of their shitty, vindicative, woke moderators. No working appeal process.

        On Slashdot they just give your detractors modpoints and take them away from your promoters so that you get buried, and they can pretend they didn't do it to you. It's just one step away from shadowbanning.

        • Yew shure?
          I give the "Editors" the abuse they deserve and don't have any problem.

          Yet...

          • I give the "Editors" the abuse they deserve and don't have any problem.

            I'm having this problem right now. If the comment history weren't so short you could look at mine and see that every day for over a week now I've had someone mod down five of my comments in rapid succession. This pattern isn't an accident, someone is clearly getting mod points every day and spending them all downmodding me. Many of the mods are obviously outright false, like modding what is clearly my actual opinion as "troll".

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by nagora ( 177841 )

              I give the "Editors" the abuse they deserve and don't have any problem.

              I'm having this problem right now. If the comment history weren't so short you could look at mine and see that every day for over a week now I've had someone mod down five of my comments in rapid succession. This pattern isn't an accident, someone is clearly getting mod points every day and spending them all downmodding me. Many of the mods are obviously outright false, like modding what is clearly my actual opinion as "troll".

              You can troll with your own opinion, although the border with "flamebait" is thin. But certainly a gay poster, say, can troll a Orthodox Christian message board by posting only things they really do believe.

              • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

                by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

                You can troll with your own opinion, although the border with "flamebait" is thin. But certainly a gay poster, say, can troll a Orthodox Christian message board by posting only things they really do believe.

                No, you literally cannot. Trolling is explicitly saying shit you don't believe in order to make people mad. This is why Slashdot has a separate "Flamebait" mod. The word was defined back in the USENET era. The whole idea that you should mod comments down because you don't agree with them is offensive, and runs contrary to the intent of Slashdot moderation — the idea is to spend your points boosting positive comments, not modding down things you don't like.

                The Moderation FAQ [slashdot.org] actually still says this:

                Ho

      • In this case it was the Reddit admin team that made the decision, not the moderators. They ousted him at the request of the dozen mods and several active community members after he came back from being inactive for years, banned them, and then he started spamming in it.

        • Yes, but Reddit's system is broken so that it enables the shitty moderators.

          The hateful woke mods can ban you from the whole site because they disagree with your non woke views.

          Any normal, well-run site would allow you to appeal any ban, and the mods being obviously biased would cause it to be reversed.

          Reddit does not have a working appeal process.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Ksevio ( 865461 )

            When you say "woke mods" you're just referring to people that are "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination" right?

            So you're concerned that the mods are not racist enough or are not allowing you to be racist enough for your liking.

            • He cited "woke" moderators but in general on Reddit you just need to have an opinion contrary to the sub's moderator to be banned, regardless of what group you belong to or appear to belong to, or if you're right or wrong.

              • What I don't get is why this is supposed to be a bad thing.

                If you get banned from a sub, find another one, or start your own. Don't try to go around the ban, which is how people get sitebanned from reddit in relation to sub bans. If someone hosted their own forum, and you disagreed with the moderators strenuously enough, you'd have the same chance to get banned. Or maybe even just for petty reasons, but the one thing it isn't is unique to reddit.

          • In this case the mods were banned, that ban was appealed, the bans were overturned, and the community put back the way it was.

            I agree with you that reddit has issues with bias and oversight in moderation and meta-moderation, but this particular case is not among them.

          • The hateful woke mods can ban you from the whole site because they disagree with your non woke views.

            Name a case where someone got banned from the whole site for pissing off a subreddit admin and not for evading a subreddit ban. In order to qualify, what angered the admin has to have been "woke", i.e. "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination".

            Any normal, well-run site would allow you to appeal any ban

            Be more appealing.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by rossz ( 67331 )

              I made a disparaging remark about the recently deceased pope (the one who shuffled pedo priests around to hide them). That resulted in a site wide perma ban with the reason being "inciting violence". I did not incite violence. My appeal was ignored. It's clear the religious beliefs of an admin is involved.

              • I made a disparaging remark about the recently deceased pope [...] I did not incite violence.

                I'm gonna need to see the contents of the comment in order to determine the veracity of your claim. If true, it's of course appalling.

            • No-one give a fart what the deluded woke are "alert to".
              The problem for normal, decent people is that the woke don't sit there "alert" - they act on their "alertness" by hating and cancelling and discriminating against normal, decent people who commit the sin of disagreeing with them.

              I was perma-banned from the whole site by a subreddit mod.
              I was insulted by a wokest, in a group nothing to do with politics or prejudice or discrimination ( as far as normal people are concerned ), and insulted him back.
              Result

      • Don't yell at them, play with them. Way more fun.

  • Once in a while I open Reddit and see that channel and all I can say about it is that every single person psrticipating in it is "attempting to enrich himself", isn't that the point of that channel? So there are millions of people following it, the entire thing looks like a cult leader trying to manipulate buy and sell orders and a bunch of cult followers chiming in in some sort of an insane harmony. It is fascinating, but they all sort of agree to it voluntarily, so what is the problem? Seems he was ban

  • Thats why he's here, and he called dibs first...

  • Data point (Score:5, Informative)

    by ElizabethGreene ( 1185405 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @09:52AM (#63297997)

    ... in case you're wondering what "monetizing a community" looks like, I was active on /wsb at the time this occurred and can share my recollections.

    IIRC, the guy came back from being inactive for years, changed the mascot/banner logo/etc, ejected and banned a bunch of mods and long time members, hung a bunch of ads, and started spamming about his televised/livestreamed competitive real money options trading event (and its sponsors.)

    To be clear on that last point, this was an event where *you* would bring *your* $50k to the table, trade it for one day, *you* take home any profits or losses, and he'd get a chunk of money from sponsorships. WSB reminds me a lot of the chaos (and good old toxicity) of the old internet, but to have someone from outside the community come in, say he owned the place, and slap ads on it was just wrong.

  • Should be amusing to watch.

  • These peoples' sense of entitlement would be amazing and hilarious, if their completely frivolous lawsuits weren't such a serious and expensive menace.

    "I don't like how your BBS that I get to use, happens to work. You owe me that it works in accordance with my vision. Your business computer is supposed to be working as an integral part of my business. And fuck no, I'm not paying you. WTF do you think I am, a customer?! And BTW, you should be liable for what I do on your computer, so rEpEaL sEcTiOn 230!"

    Th

  • So Reddit is a private company and is perfectly legally entitled to be as capricious as they like with things like banning mods, users, whatever. It's up to the court of public opinion to react in the way that matters: participation in the platform.

    The only question that seemed plausible was whether or not he could assert ownership of 'WallStreetBets' by virtue of coming up with the name. It appears that he can do so, but since he came up with the name submitting it to Reddit, that Reddit is expressly lic

  • Jaime Rogozinski = Jartek (Score:5, Interesting)

    by imunfair ( 877689 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @01:26PM (#63298699) Homepage

    For anyone who actually used WSB, Jaime Rogozinski is "Jartek", the guy who tried to use the subreddit to promote his book. Not sure why the summary or article don't mention that, since most people aren't going to know reddit users by their real names.

    I hope his lawsuit fails, no one misses him, he's a drama queen, and he was gone long before WSB really gained the traction from Gamestop that he's trying to claim credit for. When he was banned there were roughly 1.1mil subscribers to wallstreetbets, and it was 9 months after he was banned that the freak short squeeze of Gamestop and the fame of DeepFuckingValue (another user on the subreddit, not even a mod) propelled it from 1.8 to 9 million users in a month.

    That's the value and influence that Jartek is trying to claim he built, and he had nothing to do with that evolution of the subreddit. That influx of users completely changed the tone and content of the subreddit so that it had basically nothing in common with what it looked like only a few years before.

  • And no one has yet pointed to Canter and Siegel.

  • This seems to boil down to Product vs Platform. If a person uses someones Platform to build their Product, the Product does not then belong to the Platform. This seems equivalent to Amazon letting you build up your amazon seller store to a grand scale, then pushing you out but keeping your store name and selling things from it. I might be missing some small nuances here but we know traffic = money in this modern ad driven, data selling internet.

  • Slightly off-topic, I know and apologise, but I couldn't let this pass.

    The verb is "oust," meaning forcibly remove or eject. So, the "ouster" is the party who does the "ousting" to the "ousted."

    We now return you to your scheduled drivel, and get off my lawn.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      Here's a dictionary for you. [merriam-webster.com]

      • ...thus [cambridge.org], and thus [dictionary.com], and thus [collinsdictionary.com], and thus [oxfordlear...naries.com], and thus [macmillandictionary.com].

        I would also refer you to the OED, but it's behind a paywall.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by znrt ( 2424692 )

          you do not understand how language evolves. i know it is jarring when you see people using it "wrong", but in reality it's you miscalculating the situation: they're the mass, heralded by the media which in turn indulges in their ticks, so their action is what will define what is "right" from now on, no matter what you were told.

          indeed, "wrong" and "right" are totally meaningless in this world. wow, if i had learnt this a few decades ago ...

  • If you control an army of bored and brainwashed sheep with cash to burn, the possibilities are endless. If you're the one in at the start you can't lose. I'd call it insider trading

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