It will be hilarious when AOC (and Ted Lieu, who posted a similar Tweet) when they realize that WallStreetBets was once moderated by Martin Shkreli the Pharma Bro, fully embodies his attitudes, and has substantial overlap with MAGA (which has already been noted by several media outlets). Defending r/WSB brigading/market manipulation is not the hill they want to be dying on.
I doubt they care. Whatever their partisan preferences prior to this debacle, the ideology of the bear-raiding hedge fund that was targeted is worse and - more importantly - it has brought about far more actual harm. It's the power dynamics that matter here and I don't think I'm alone on the left in seeing an attempt at popular organisation being suppressed by greedy oligarchs.
Then they should push the SEC and the exchanges for restrictions on short selling, not cheering blatant collusion and market manipulation. If this maneuver were tried by a group of institutional investors, or god forbid a group of bulge bracket banks which if unrestricted would have the capacity to drive any stock to 0 or infinity at will, the SEC would shut them down immediately.
This reads like the "They should go and vote," argument about protesting police brutality in places which have seen brutal policing remain intact regardless of electoral politics. Democracy isn't just voting, and if federal regulators refuse to act proportionately on obvious Wall Street abuse for a sustained period, nonviolent resistance should commence (the short squeeze could have indirectly acted as a restriction on short selling and much bigger market manipulation than the retail investors were capable of).
It's definitely wrong in a vacuum but no worse than the illegal bear raids which probably brought Melvin Capitol to this point. These have not been acted against by the SEC, and nor have crimes far worse in magnitude.
Brokers are clearly taking provisional actions to calm down the situation in advance of new regulations against this sort of brigading, which will likely be coming from the SEC.
They are still allowing stocks to be sold. This is a giveaway to the shorters.
You can't even say this is the "noble little guys" against "Big Bad Wall Street" when the set of "noble little guys" is full of disreputable characters.
Their character matters less than the power disparity (with Big Bad Wall Street still on the other end). That's the point about fighting for the little guy: if we assume a hierarchy is unjust, where he is in said hierarchy matters much more than who he is.
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