The Reddit message board that is breaking the internet by putting Wall Street into a frenzy was briefly put private by its moderators on Wednesday, adding more confusion to a wild day.
“We are experiencing technical difficulties based on unprecedented scale as a result of the new interest,” read a post on the WallStreetBets subreddit, adding that enforcement of Reddit’s content policy and forum rules became increasingly difficult. “WSB will be back,” the moderators added.
The subreddit exploded onto the investment scene earlier this week when aggressive promotion of GameStop shares by several of its members sent the video game retailer’s shares soaring more than 400%. The stocks appear to have helped fuel a so-called short in GameStop stocks, so investors who had used options to bet against the stocks needed to hedge those bets by buying stocks.
WallStreetBets has since turned its attention to other stocks and the AMC theater chain soared more than 300% on Wednesday.
In a post Wednesday night, shortly after WallStreetBets re-released, the moderators described their struggle to handle the group’s growing popularity.
“We have grown to the size we only dreamed of long enough to have a bad night,” they said. “We have so many comments and presentations that we can’t even read them all, much less act as moderators.”
The moderators also said that several Twitter accounts were trying to impersonate them.
“@Wsbmod is the only Twitter handle whose statements come directly from some part of the team.”
While in private mode, a subreddit called WallStreetBetsnews gained more than 100,000 followers in around 30 minutes on Wednesday night. That subreddit was established in March of last year. In it, users urged their colleagues not to panic. Others encouraged buying even more shares in revenge for the disruption.
Reddit told Citizen Free Press Business that WallStreetBets moderators chose to make the forum private and that the company was not involved in the decision.