It's a legitimate misconception exactly until one has seen it debunked. After that, it's tendentious dishonesty. Everybody gets the chance to misunderstand, once.

But, identically the same people are seen to repeat the falsehood. One cannot in earnest assume good faith of one who has already been seen to repeat a particular lie, deliberately, again and again and again. Repeating a lie over and over is a specific, and historically very successful, disinformation method with the technical name The Big Lie, most famously connected with Joseph Goebbels but explained by his proud teacher, Edward Bernays. Calling out instances of use of disinformation is an essential defense of any open forum.