Among its many successes, the neoliberal revolution’s greatest triumph may have been convincing people that capitalism could be democratic. With the tyrannical fetters of taxes and state regulation removed, neoliberalism’s ideological advocates claimed, the individual would be free to realize their authentic self. The forum in which that flourishing would take place, of course, was the market — a naturally efficient and self-correcting mechanism in which everyone could compete, own property, and ultimately become a capitalist in their own right.

Ridiculous as it always was, particularly after the crash of 2008, this rhetoric has taken on a whole new life in the age of apps, consumer reviews, and e-commerce. Robinhood, one of the companies at the center of the ongoing GameStop fiasco, is a case in point, having been founded in 2011 on a promise to “democratize access to the financial markets,” an ethos its founders say was inspired by none other than Occupy Wall Street. One obvious irony of this claim is that Robinhood’s business model is actually premised on the sale of its users’ trading information to larger firms — their “freemium” investment tool in effect a kind of direct market research that allows companies like Citadel Securities (which boasted $6.7 billion in revenue last year) to generate more profit for themselves.

As plenty have also noted, the app’s role in shutting out the Reddit-based trading of GameStop and other stocks alongside Wall Street players like TD Ameritrade clearly gives the lie to its promise of radically democratized finance. Less closely examined, however, has been the role of social media platforms in aiding this crackdown. Two days ago,Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman announced the exchange’s willingness to halt trading on the basis of social media chatter, telling CNBC: