Can you imagine yourself paying someone to smear others on a forum? What if you really believed in your own cause? What if it cost you a trivial proportion of your buckets of money, and if you had legions of lawyers able to write terrifying NDAs? What if you had a history of being unscrupulous in countless other contexts?

What if all it took to "solve the problem" were a few choice words said to the right person?

This kind of smearing is almost certainly happening all over the place because there is tons of motive, tons of opportunity, and many people with a habit of being unscrupulous.

Except it takes about 10 seconds to click over to byrneseyeview's profile and see that he's been on hn for years and is obviously not a shill.

It reflects poorly on you that you'd rather accuse someone of being dishonest than take a little effort to check your paranoia.