Jamie Rogozinski, founder of WallStreetBets (WSB), a thematic trading discussion forum, is suing the company that owns Reddit. He, in particular, accuses the platform of violating the contract, depriving him of access to moderation of the section and violating his right to the trademark of the WallStreetBets brand. About it informs The Wall Street Journal.
“I think it’s personal and I feel cheated,” Rogozinski told the WSJ.
However, a representative of the site said that the claim of the creator of WSB has no real grounds. According to her, Rogozinski tried to get rich at the expense of the forum, for which he was removed from the moderators and blocked by the subreddit administrators three years ago. Going to court, the interlocutor of the publication emphasized, is the same attempt to capitalize on the popularity of WSB.
In his lawsuit, Rogozinski wants to challenge the removal of WSB moderator status and the right to use the WallStreetBets brand. After a large-scale influx of private investors into trading, the founder of the forum published a book on this topic in early 2020 and promoted it, including on his subreddit. As a result, Reddit blocked Rogozinski’s account for “attempting to monetize the community” – this is prohibited by the rules of the resource. A week later, his account was restored, but he was deprived of access to the management of WallStreetBets, and other moderators banned Rogozinski directly from the forum.
Jamie Rogozinski created the WallStreetBets subreddit in January 2012 to take his mind off the dry analysis of the financial markets. The community gained particular notoriety following, in January 2021, its members untwisted shares of the GameStop video game store network by 2500%.
Traders also artificially dispersed the quotes of other meme stocks: for example, “redditors” participated in the run-up of the shares of the AMC cinema chain, the Cleveland-Cliffs steel company, the insurer Clover Healthmortgage company Rocket, central bank of japanheadphone manufacturer Koss and even silver futures. Currently, the WSB audience exceeds 13.6 million members.
