I regularly think that claims of astroturfing are overblown, but it is common in the "privacy" focused industry to FUD competitors to gain market share.

I'm immediately reminded of some shady search engine CEO going on OAN and other fringe shows posing as a security researcher to spread FUD about DDG to drive traffic to his site (can't find the link for it now.) That OAN video even went around the security industry (among compliance and less technical folk) who were persuaded DDG was now worse than Google for consumer privacy.