THREAD: Do the people on Reddit's #WallStreetBets who are buying Gamestop, AMC, and other stocks have any legal liability to do so?

1/ Although the facts are still evolving, it appears that many users on #WallStreetBets (a "sub-reddit" on Reddit, a social media site) and others starting buying Gamestop, AMC, and other stocks that they believed were being "shorted" by certain Wall Street firms.

2/ You "short" a stock when you sell a stock that you don't own, betting that the price will go down. The goal is to sell high and buy low. If you "short" a stock and the price goes up, you can lose a lot of money by buying shares at a higher price than you sold them at.

3/ Based on media reports, it looks like a lot of Redditors didn't like that certain Wall Street firms had bet big that the price of Gamestop and AMC would go down via COVID.

By buying up Gamestop and AMC stock, they caused the price to shoot way up in a short period of time.

4/ That caused fast gains for them and potentially huge losses for firms that shorted those stocks.

So did they engage in "market manipulation," as some people on social media have claimed? Could they get in trouble with the SEC, which is "watching" the matter, or go to prison?