More importantly it saved hedge funds like Melvin and Citadel form self-harm. They aggressively shorted these stocks into the ground, looking to make billions. If the prices stay up or keep going up, they stand to lose billions and even go out of business.

If you look at r/wallstreetbets, only a few people seem to have invested more than a couple of tens of thousands. The guy who came up with this idea to profit off of short squeeze seems to have invested only 53k. Most other people invested a few hundred or a few thousand. Also, people on r/wallstreetbets routinely show screenshots of their losses. It's kind of preposterous to move forward assuming these people don't know what they're doing, and Robinhood saved them...

These trading platforms are blatantly intervening to save the hedge funds, not the Reddit traders. Government may have a say in it, too, because they want market stability. And if these hedge have to sell their long positions to cover shorts, it could put a big dent in the market and even cause a larger scale crash.

how would that cause a crash? Retail (and less shady institutions) will buy more aapl when it dips and all that's happened at the end of the day is a big transfer of wealth from institutions to retail (and less shady institutions).

To cover their short position at a huge loss, funds would have to sell their long positions, which is basically a big sell-off. That may be just temporary. But in a deep bubble it could trigger a mass selloff and a recession.