Trading Platforms

Trading platforms like robinhood have clearing companies, which give them permission to trade actual stocks
robinhood's clearing company was owned by citadel, which absorbed the losses that melvin capital suffered in the short squeeze
basically, robinhood is literally not allowed to trade anything if their clearing company doesn't clear their trades, they have no agency in this matter
and robinhood's clearing company has more in monetary losses at stake by allowing individual small investors to continue to pump gamestop's price up, because they're literally the ones getting squeezed by this act
so webull actually had to take this policy too yesterday because they're under the same clearing company
but i guess the platform is smaller so they're not getting sued like robinhood is
anyway, robinhood is definitely guilty of market manipulation because they literally financially benefit from limiting buys and allowing sells
it is blatantly an attempt to pressure holders into liquidating their positions in order to bail out their own bosses, to simplify the situation
their "justification" was that it's "for your own good" and some people reported that robinhood's app prevented them from canceling sell orders, basically forcing them to liquidate their positions against their will "for their own good"