But about as democratic as can be. No one was forced to buy Reddit. Benefit or not to the company, the company was essentially sold. The new owners of their very own choice will want a return. A big return to essentially cover 8 billion they just paid for it.
Reddit will need tens of billions in revenue to make the profits those new owners will demand. It is that drive to justify the cost that will make it another shitty bloated ad platform.
Shorting is a very important and good mechanism to bring prices back down to earth for any stock. Without it, you would see even higher valuation of which ultimately will be corrected to real financials and valuations. Be it one week or one century. And without shorting, there would be even more l people making dumb investments and intimately being bag holders.