It could be argued that r/wallstreetbets is a public forum. Anyone can join. Think of it like a virtual conference room. If I walk into this room and yell “Eve

It could be argued that r/wallstreetbets is a public forum. Anyone can join. Think of it like a virtual conference room. If I walk into this room and yell “Everybody buy GME to screw the hedge funds” am I engaging in market manipulation? There is no formal or informal agreement to do so if someone says “ok great idea” and go buys GME. Besides how are they going to enforce the laws? Match IPs to ISPs and extradite all the thousands if not millions of people across the world who bough stock? If a fine is issued do they just divide it up by the number of people who commented in wallstreetbets and held stock? Or is every person fined individually? How is this worse than the sell walls that hedge funds use to deflate a share price? The truth of the matter is the SEC dropped the ball. They were probably too busy having a wank while on pornhub [0]. In December as soon as the share price started to rise GME was placed on the NYSE threshold securities list for large numbers of “failure to deliver”. Keep in mind it had entered this same list earlier in the year. Followers of wallstreetbets were suspicious and believed that illegal naked short selling was occurring so they informed the SEC [1]. Then a few weeks later the stock rose 10% then 50% the next day leaving the call options ITM on a Friday afternoon. What did the SEC do? They sat on their hands over the weekend instead of suspending trading of the stock and performing an investigation. [0] https://abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/sec-pornography-employees-spent-hours-surfing-porn-sites/story?id=10452544 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/sec-pornography-employees-spe... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/kr98ym/gme_gang_we_need_to_complain_about_naked_short/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/kr98ym/gme_...