One example of such a short sell was the report by Hindenburg research about NKLA [0], which also discloses their short position. The net outcome of such disclosures is that fraudulent activity is exposed, the people shorting the stock make a profit, the people who were holding the stock still have their shares, and hopefully new investors are more informed about the stock that's being shorted.

Not all short sellers take this approach though, they could just short the stock because they think it's overvalued. It seems that it's what happened here, but ended up on the wrong side of the trade when WSB decided to buy GME.

[0] https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/