I think there is an element of naivety ON Robinhood with how the clearing house (DTCC) could demand deposit money from RH. I feel like RH might have been bullied to shut down buys on those securities and the absence of the clearing house involved in this hearing is a huge miss.

RH could have done multiple things to avoid this: stopped sign-ups, delayed trades on all new accounts or simply exceeded required deposit ratios so that the clearing house couldn't demand things of them.

There were significant shorts that were essentially unfolding. Ryan Cohen became involved with GameStop and the potential for a new direction of the company possibly raised the price up to the $20-40 range. Over-shorts would have corrected themselves with the skyrocketing price that day and then GME would likely have returned to the $20-40 range it was in prior. That is just things playing out on the market, not manipulation.

Some of the research I've been doing over the past few weeks has revealed that for all retail trading, there are conflicts of interest from the retail broker all the way up the chain to the clearing house. Similar concept in social media where the user is the product. There is a former investment bank trader/portfolio manager that has some videos on this - caveat that he also sells classes now. Search for 'anton kreil retail trading' for some insights.