I'm a bit surprised by this reaction actually. I know it's in HN favor to keep the comment section academic; so my apologies if my comment came off construed as conspiracy theory. Given that early 2017 a heavily discussed topic was fake news and intentional manipulation of social media, this did not seem out of the realm of possibility for me, hence my original comment.
Agreed, the germs of the topic are still very much airborne, and that's a big part of it. I think we just have to keep repeating this every time it comes up (sigh). Totally clear that your intention was sincere.
