It's a familiar distinction. You've expressed it particularly well. We don't have the real-world information about users that would be needed to make such calls with certainty (nor would we want it!), but based on what I've seen, I don't believe it's fanboyism in this case.

More importantly, it's a distinction without a difference in cases like this. When someone is using dozens of accounts to post corporate propaganda to HN over many years, they're abusing the site and we ban them.