Battles on social media? The whole city is out there protesting against mainland china encroaching on their rights. Just like any people who feel oppressed at any point in time they are trying to do something about it. While sovereign entities rarely form without military conflicts, it has happened. So the answer to your question is that they are people who hope that their freedom doesn't have to be backed by violence.

My advice is to just watch twitch streams from HKers live. Directly from the source. :)

Also just going to throw this one in here: HK police are largely replaced by mainland chinese at this point, so it's really not surprising to hear about the police violence.