You’re really wrong about Times Square. It’s easily thousands. A splinter group just marched down Thompson St downtown (roughly parallel to seventh Ave) and that was clearly several hundred protesters.
They chanted but were otherwise well behaved.
It may be “thousands” now, but when they were showing the live shot on air of Times Square, it was barely a hundred at that point in time.
Absolute hyperbole at that time, which admittedly can and likely did change over the course of time.