I think it is normal market operation. They think the stock is...

I think it is normal market operation. They think the stock is overvalued, so they go short. Others think it is undervalued, so they go long. One benefit of short activity is it does increase liquidity. After all, if you really think the stock is ‘cheap’ at these levels (I do not, FWIW), someone is still willing to sell it at high volumes at these prices, right?

The difference is where someone shorts then releases a report with (mistakenly? deliberately?) incorrect information. I can clearly see why people take issue with that. However a good company will survive and thrive over such attempts (WTC or PME being two such examples). But what we have here is a bunch of institutions who are forced to buy the stock, now able to lend it out. BoA, ML and others can take advantage. That’s just the market being normal. It doesn’t mean the company is a zero, just that it’s overvalued by their metrics.