There are lots of angry people who are trying to summon a ‘reality’ that they want to see, where their political opponent has suffered for sharing their political views. It’s why this story got upvoted on Hacker News at all, despite it being obviously misleading and easy to disprove. HN users are critical readers on many topics, so to me it appears that they stop using those critical thinking skills when they have an emotional investment in a topic. In other words, this is just like any other political topic in America.