Reddit Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Steve Huffman revealed he supports the ‘efforts’ of the controversial community, WallStreetBets.
Huffman has been interested in the community for a long time but he said it was too late to track the impact of WallStreetBets on the sharp rise in GameStop shares last January.
“I was actually a little slow because I didn’t realize Reddit had been exposed in the real world,” he said.
At that time, the price of GameStop shares reached almost US $ 500 before plunging.
When asked what was playing in Huffman's mind when he saw GameStop shares jump from US $ 20 to US $ 400, Huffman thought it was a fair thing.
“I like business news, I like reading books about investors and their successes and failures.
"So, that is a topic that interests me. I think WallStreetBets' move is an interesting story and a wise one, ”he explained.
WallStreetBets acts in this way with the aim of providing ‘lessons’ to investment fund companies doing ‘short-selling’ over capacity.
Some claim that the community has manipulated the market as a whole.
According to Huffman, he received many calls to close the WallStreetBets account.
"But our motivation or what we are trying to do in the situation is different, which is to ensure that WallStreetBets remains active," he said.
Huffman explained, he is often proud to see people do amazing things like WallStreetBets
“I feel happy or excited when people come together to do something amazing,” he said.
In addition to WallStreetBets, Huffman also has to deal with another community that supports former U.S. President Donald Trump’s allegations of election fraud.
"What will you do when the President does not fulfill his ambitions, like the principles of our country?" according to him.
An influential Reddit community, TheDonald was so strongly supportive of Trump on the Internet that Reddit blocked the community's account last year.
Huffman told BBC News it was the hardest decision he had ever made.
If you don’t know who Huffman is, he was one of the influential individuals in Silicon Valley who determined what content we could or could not see on the Internet.
