Part 5 of 6 - Elimination of DRSyourGME
Part 3 of 6 - Fidelity versus DRS GME
Part 4 of 6 - Censorship of Plan vs Book
Part 5 of 6 - Elimination of DRSyourGME
Part 6 of 6 - Necessity of the Fediverse
The elimination of r/DRSyourGME
In April 2023, an author creates a post on r/DRSyourGME archive link, that expanded upon a previous piece that became commonly referred to as the "Heatlamp theory" or "Heatlamp DD". This new post re-ignites the then-dormant discussion surrounding Plan versus Book. This author discovered information that insinuated that by leaving our shares in Plan, we were effectively enabling the DTC to exploit a loophole that allowed them to account for a larger number of shares available to them than they actually held, and therefore this was further corroboration of the consensus that shares should be held exclusively in Book and that any open Plan accounts should be terminated.
The significance of this episode was not necessarily so much the information that was learned, but the censorship that Superstonk applied to it.
The author cleverly posted this excellent post in the small DRSyourGME subreddit, beyond the control of Superstonk moderators. That same day, numerous individuals made the attempt to share this information over on Superstonk, but, surprisingly, or not, the mods of Superstonk kept removing the posts. "You have reposted content that we previously had to moderate" was their justification for removing it.
But members of the Superstonk community were not pleased with this deliberate and sustained removal of this conversation. As many as 6 attempts were made to post the information in Superstonk that day, and each and every one was removed promptly by the moderators. This caused an emotional reaction in the community and anger was building against the moderators.
Why were they deliberately making a sustained effort to remove this very specific and esoteric piece of research that was posted in a much smaller subreddit? If the research was wrong or inconclusive, let it be wrong and let's all have a discussion about it and dissect it and figure out what the true reality is, no?
Why did the mods feel so compelled to enforce their decision that we the community were not permitted to discuss this topic of conversation at all?
A prominent community member drew attention to the censored post in a tweet: "Unconfirmed. But big if true. And it's being suppressed."
Why were the mods of Superstonk censoring this topic of conversation? This callout by the prominent community member effectively got the cat out of the bag, and the mods of Superstonk lost control of the community in this episode. Despite their efforts to censor the conversation before it could continue, their acts of suppression caused a reaction that effectively drew even more attention to it (this is often called the Streisand Effect), and the Plan versus Book discussion that they evidently tried so hard to contain was back on and at the forefront of the community's attention.
Plan versus Book was clearly something that was worth our attention, and all signs pointed to the conclusion that holding shares exclusively in Book, aka "pure DRS", was the appropriate course of action for anyone that was interested in keeping possession of their shares out of the hands of the DTC.
This episode of censorship made something clear to the community and also to the ever-present opponents of the community: that if important information was going to be censored on Superstonk, that the community would use other places such as the r/DRSyourGME subreddit to have those important conversations. And this ultimately put a target on this little subreddit. It was a small but growing community where crucial information that was effectively contained previously was able to be discussed openly, beyond the control of any parties that might have had influence over what was permitted to be discussed in Superstonk.
Later, in June 2023, members of the DRSGME.org team, in the perpetual search for the truth surrounding DRS and share ownership, went to GameStop headquarters to view the shareholders list.
This viewing of the shareholders list was approved by and accommodated by GameStop. They were permitted, by GameStop, to view the shareholders list, which showed the full list of individuals that had directly registered their shares, including their name, address, and share count. The team members were not allowed to have a copy of this information, but were permitted to write down the number of shares (not the names of individuals or their addresses) on paper. GameStop vetted the hand-written notes to ensure that no personally identifying information was recorded, and the team members were able to take their notes home. They subsequently began to share their findings in their community, r/DRSyourGME, a subreddit that now had approximately 13 thousand members.
In the subsequent discussions on r/DRSyourGME, the team members explained that they were able to confirm the existence of entries in the shareholders list of some specific individuals that willingly shared their personal information with them.
Additionally, the team members also discussed the non-existence of some publicly known names that they might have expected to be present on the list. For example we all know the real name of DFV aka DeepFuckingValue aka RoaringKitty, and we also know approximately how many shares of GME that DFV had in the past, and this is an entry that they looked for but did not find in the list. Along these lines, there were other individuals that have played a role in this saga, whose names are publicly known, that investors of GameStop might expect to be present on the shareholders list, but were not found.
It was these particular discussions about the revelations of the non-existence of names that might have been expected to be on the shareholders list that ended in the elimination in the r/DRSyourGME subreddit.
Mods of Superstonk pinned a post in their subreddit denouncing the actions of the DRSGME.org team, calling the actions and subsequent discussions about the non-existence of certain individuals "profoundly stupid", among other words used. The Superstonk mods accused the team of doxxing those individuals whose real names are publicly known but were not present on the shareholders list, despite that doxxing is typically defined as something such as "the action or process of searching for and publishing private or identifying information about a particular individual on the internet, typically with malicious intent."
On June 14th 2023, Reddit made the executive decision to side with the accusers and ban the r/DRSyourGME subreddit, with the justification provided that the community had repeatedly violated Reddit's moderation rules, thus eliminating from their platform the small but growing community of GameStop investors devoted to investigating the fine details surrounding DRS and GME share ownership.
Coincidentally, or not, the banning of this subreddit happened during the blackout protest that happened as a result of changes that Reddit had announced to their API. During the blackout, many but not all subreddits were unavailable for public browsing. DRSyourGME did not participate in the blackout, and was still open for discussion. As a consequence of the blackout protest, many lesser-known subreddits that typically would never land on the front page of Reddit in fact did so, and reportedly there was at least one instance of a post on r/DRSyourGME that emerged on the front page of Reddit during this time, prior to its banning.
