This is against Hacker News guidelines:

"Please don't make insinuations about astroturfing. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried, email us and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks, I'm new to commenting here, I don't see a delete but so I just edited my comment away.

Do you think the author is fake? Go read his comment history: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=npmaile

The question is simply posed but unfortunately is rather difficult to answer because it depends what you mean by fake.

Accounts with a history are very valuable to companies in the business of "creating organic public support".

Also an author can be part of a community bit have a motivation to drive a discussion in a certain direction.

In either case it doesn't mean the post, the author, or the history are "fake" but it can mean there is some level of astroturfing going on.

Anyway I've been informed the guidelines prohibit such insinuations and I can understand why as they are an easy accusation but don't lend towards evidence based or productive discussions so I've removed my comment.

Certainly it's an annoying trait to claim that a statement you disagree with is disingenuous/insincere.