HN has never been internally consistent and a part of that is that people take the shit posted here seriously and all kinds of trolling and unsubstantiated nonsense flies past and people take it for real. People here are incredibly gullible and are easy to take for a ride. I've had a handful of bait posts reach #1 and stay there for many hours because the posters here are easy to game with emotional angles (most people are, but it's so easy to do it here).
This weekend was just a barrage of bullshit from people who have no insider scoop, with the "social media" fiddling their own tune posting whatever they can dig up to maintain some presence. It's a circus and you're all dumb monkeys.
On 4chan, we can acknowledge nearly everything is hearsay without concrete, hard-as-nails verifiable proof. Which is exactly what HN should have for every single thing that is posted: qualifications and evidence. Every post that is taken seriously on 4chan is either done so 1) in hindsight, or 2) if proof is presented upfront that makes it obvious there is an insider. 1) of course works as expected, as nobody takes this shit seriously upfront... except on HN.
But
They have leaked real things in the past, in exactly the same way. It may be 5% or less that turn out to be true, but there's the rub. That's why no one can completely dismiss it out of hand (and why were even discussing it on an HN comment thread in the first place).