„However, those parties would somehow need to systematically...

„However, those parties would somehow need to systematically bypass the market operator's order flow rules (i.e. ignore all the other competing buy/sell orders) on an industrial scale. That's just too implausible for me.“

Let‘s introduce dark pools…

And don‘t big financial institutions place their own computers very, very close to disalloweds main frame to be a few split seconds faster than other market participants/exchanges so they can „channel the order flow“. (might not be the best English, but you get my point)

Regarding the „unlimited supply of shares for shorting“ argument I already replied in the post above. It seems, that for you it‘s a „all or nothing“ / „if this mechanism doesn’t work 100% all the time then it‘s rubbish“ point of view. I wouldn’t assume that everything works in a 100% coordinated way while shorters push the price downward. But with FUD, less liquidity on the buy side as you assume, with a bit of probing (the 1 share sell orders by bots to test the queue) their high speed algorithm will be good enough to exploit this mechanism. The rest is a combination of other factors (stop loss triggering, margin calls) or mechanisms (borrow a few mor shares from Long holder #1?).

You make very good points and most of them are valid and at least partially applicable. But it shows that your experience has drawn a lot from highly liquid futures markets. I wouldn‘t criticize your arguments on that market.

But you seem to not acknowledge any form of illegal or grey area manipulative behavior. It‘s like talking about guns and you‘re saying „I shoot my weapon daily in a shooting range. We all are. Zero incidents.“ while we feel like being the victim of an armed robbery in a back alley.