Just a reminder that Robinhood didn't prevent this. Automatic increases to clearing house collateral requirements prevented this. If Robinhood allowed those trades to go through, they'd have been cut off from the clearing houses, and none of their customers would have been able to perform any trades.
Unfortunately, due to the low level of public understanding of how stock trades actually settle, the conspiracy narrative you're presenting was the one that made it into the public consciousness.
There's no such thing as an instant stock trade. Retail brokerages are a leaky abstraction over what is actually an incredibly messy settlement layer. This abstraction holds when everything is normal, and leaks when stock prices become too volatile.
Unfortunately, due to the low level of public understanding of how stock trades actually settle, the conspiracy narrative you're presenting was the one that made it into the public consciousness.
There's no such thing as an instant stock trade. Retail brokerages are a leaky abstraction over what is actually an incredibly messy settlement layer. This abstraction holds when everything is normal, and leaks when stock prices become too volatile.