By "easily", you mean "lazily". It's one thing to assume the comment is irrational, it's another thing, and even lazier thing, to assume that the commenter hates on success or enjoys trolling.

It must be uncomfortable to see that our community was fooled. But blaming a whistleblower isn't the right coping strategy.

That time was possibly the peak for using baseless accusations of sexism to counter any criticism of women, at least in the online reddit/twitter/facebook/etc sphere. The old HN threads even have some. I feel people have been gradually getting slightly braver in standing up to this.

You really don't need insider knowledge to make an assessment like that. You just have to learn what you look for when it comes to BS and be prepared to get some negative karma points for calling out companies due to the multiple social media PR companies they employ that use various reputation defense techniques.

Just because you're angry and irrational, doesn't mean that you're wrong. In fact one could argue being the only one to see the scam might itself make a lot of people angry