[reggieband]

I often think of political spin. Great politicians don't need to lie or even to misrepresent facts. They just have to present actual facts that highlight some narrative.

It seems to be a fact that limiting or preventing buy orders would benefit hedge funds. So we can spin the fact that they prevented buy orders because it benefited hedge funds.

Another fact seems to be that Robinhood needed to cover its margins and required capital to do so. So the new spin is that Robinhood prevented orders because it needed to cover margins.

There is no real truth anywhere, just competing narratives. Slowly the prevailing narrative is changing from the first to the second. Some people are choosing one story over the other as the Truth. There is no doubt some actual paid PR going into both stories. My own opinion is that in cases as complex as this, there is no real Truth that fits any promoted narrative.

[dfxm12]

These narratives don't even appear to be mutually exclusive. Both can be true. Neither can be true. Several other unstated narratives can also be true. I think it's a common fault to believe only one thing can be true, when there are clearly many possibilities. I don't think it's exactly a false choice, but I'm sure there's a name for it.

It just bugs me when people don't consider that, and it's hard to tell if they're speaking in bad faith, have poor logical deduction skills or something else.

[reggieband]

> I don't think it's exactly a false choice, but I'm sure there's a name for it.

It's a false dichotomy [1] and that is exactly how these narratives are spun. Another technique isn't forwarding your own narrative, but belittling the opposing narrative. "Only a fool could possibly believe A when it is possible that B is the reason". They don't even have to say that B is the reason, just suggest that it is a possible reason and believing anything else is foolish.

We're seeing exactly that. People are too stupid/ignorant to understand how complex this subject is, so they should just shut up and trust us when we say B is the reason. Do you even know how B works? Clearly you don't. If you did you would understand your own foolishness in even considering that A factored into any decision related to this subject. You idiot. Maybe you're a conspiracy theorist!

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma