A WSJ report from Wednesday revealed that Jaime Rogozinski, the man who created the now-famous WallStreetBets subreddit in 2012 is now suing the website. According to Rogozinski, his ousting as a moderator, and subsequent removal from the subreddit were unjust and baseless, just as Reddit’s effort to block his attempt to put a trademark on the “WallStreetBets” name.

Image courtesy of 123rf. via The Tokenist

Founder of WallStreetBets Sues Reddit

According to a Wednesday report, the creator of the famous—or perhaps infamous —r/WallStreetBets, Jaime Rogozinski, is suing Reddit. Rogozinski, who created the subreddit in 2012 and was ousted as its moderator in 2020, believes that the platform’s action to remove him was unjust.

Furthermore, the subreddit’s creator finds that the website’s move to block his trademark filing for the name of the subreddit that same year is similarly unfair. Reddit reportedly revealed it strongly disagrees with Rogozinski, who sold his GameStop tale to Hollywood in 2021, and allegedly called the lawsuit “frivolous”.

What is WallStreetBets?

While the WallStreetBets subreddit has been around for over a decade, it truly earned its place in the spotlight during the “meme stock” craze of late 2020 and early 2021. At the time, the massive short squeeze caused by retail investors from the forum was very controversial and led to some major challenges for one of the main platforms used by the Redditors—Robinhood—and even lead to a Congressional hearing and report.

While the craze has since died down, the subreddit still has an impressive headcount with more than 13 million users. Furthermore, it has created a lasting legacy both in culture and arguably changed the fortunes of some of the firms whose shares the short squeeze targeted. The turbulent events of early 2021 even got the SEC to use the term “meme stocks” in official documents when discussing GameStop (GME) and AMC (AMC).

GameStop, the company at the center of the “meme stock” craze also used its renewed relevance to try and rejuvenate its business. While the brick-and-mortar video game seller’s attempts to make its business digital, or enter the NFT game with its own marketplace haven’t gone entirely smoothly, the company is definitely no longer at death’s door as it was in late 2020.

Apart from the r/WallStreetBets creator’s conflict with the website, he also found himself in conflict with the community he founded on the subreddit. Shortly after being removed as the community’s moderator, Rogozinski was also outright banned from WallStreetStreetBets over what the subreddit claimed were his attempts to monetize it. 

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