"who cares what the share price does if the fundamentals are sound?".
Sounds OK, but it isn't. The problem is that shorters are part of the fundamentals. Fundamentals include factors that can damage a company, and shorters can destroy a company simply by dropping the share price at critical times so that it can't raise finance, or so that finance costs it more than it otherwise would. And that's not the only manipulative game they play, of course. Remember, shorters are not passive investors who just think a company will not do well, they are predators who will do everything they can to destroy a company. Just think - their profit is maximised if they can send a company broke. To them, disallowed isn't a gentlemen's club, it's gang warfare; pure game theory applies. Bots to drive share prices down? No problem. Fake news to drive fear into investors? Piece of cake.
But opponents of short selling face a major obstacle: disalloweds make money from them, and they too will play dirty games to protect their income, without caring who it hurts.
The Canadian junior miners have clubbed together to found Save Canadian Mining, whose purpose is to end the destruction wrought by shorters on the Canadian mining sector:
https://savecanadianmining.com/

Stop Predatory Short Selling

You can't get much clearer than that, can you?