You raise some very good points. Primarily, what will OSC have to come up with for their case to pass even a minimal "smell test" ? I see three broad possibilities:

1) That they would be alleging criminality. That seems really tough since broadly it requires some sort of individual victim(s) or investor class. The only clear OSC win here is someone who can show they acted on a misleading post , and that they were otherwise a prudent investor , especially since AG is not an advisor directly or indirectly. Sounds far-fetched and likely is not going to happen. Tracing ill-gotten gains to senior or sanctioned AG reps seems equally far-fetched. I only wish that I had looked harder at some AG sites, many have made their investors lots of money. FWR for example. Oddly, by going ballistic , OSC has carved out for itself a need to demonstrate that AG promoted crappy companies in preference to "good " ones. Unless AG were involved in financial/financing transactions, or somehow on the take from scammers it begins to feel more like a tear-gas attack on an unruly crowd.

2) That they would be simply alleging improper controls or inethical behaviour designed to enhance AG's business revenue. OK so far. But, at the expense of whom ? It remains a red herring unless there is an investor who is wronged as a result. After all, these are PUBLIC companies, lest the club forget. And those companies are all free to sue AG if they think AG is somehow libelling, scamming or overcharging them.

3) That OSC sees all the bad behaviour (which is quite observable) going on at many forums (worse away from AG) and says "We have to find a culprit" . There would be little doubt that most posters using multiple aliases (there are perhaps a few schizophrenics ) are truly engaging in fraudulent behaviour. And that should be stopped because we all including AG, are losers when people violate their contractual obligation. BUT AG cannot control individual behaviour, only fire deviant employees or bar deviant posters. AG's asset base is entirely goodwill and reputation, so they would have no incentive whatever to include "deviance" in their job descriptions.

In summary, we have just seen the OSC blow out a lot of dots , but it remains to be seen how they will convincingly connect them. Hopefully, that windmill on their horizon is not free speech , as abused as it might be.