[eternalny1]

Absolutely not, it's just an open discussion of ideas.

Straight from this post ...

> This is not fraud. There is no manipulation here. We aren’t forcing anyone to do anything. It’s going to happen with or without us. But I want to ride.

[snet0]

Well, if they say it's not fraud, who am I to say otherwise!

Joking aside, the "we just like the stock" "this is not financial advice" stuff is as much a defence as the Someone Who Isn't Me thing I remember seeing on drug-related forums years back. You feel like it's protection because you're not getting prosecuted for admitting something you know is at least in the ballpark of law-breaking, but in reality you're just small-fry that nobody cares about. The moment a big-time dealer is under the spotlight, no amount of SWIM is protection.

I don't expect anyone from WSB to receive repercussions for this, but afaik this is dangerous legal territory and their defensive phrasing is a facade.

[eternalny1]

To me, it seems like people just noticed something absurd in the market (a short % over 100) and were pointing it out.

It was a perfect set-up for a historical short squeeze if the right catalyst came along. And that catalyst wasn't simply the people on WSB, there were other catalysts such as the Chewey founder coming in, and then earnings reports.

Once those factors played out, the people who noticed the precarious position the hedge funds had put themselves in got to watch their exact predicitions come true.

I don't see how that can be confused with a pump-and-dump scheme or any sort of market manipulation.