It is interesting that they are essentially playing along to the US govt. propaganda. [...] It is also funny how after more evidence comes out, neither the media, nor say, Redditors, go back and admit their previous mistake, instead the strategy moves to "ridicule".
You shouldn't under-estimate how much propaganda being done by a variety of states is being done online through the use of sock puppets. While I'm not trying to claim it's happening on reddit specifically I wouldn't be shocked to find out it was. This is one of the (afaik) stated main purposes for the "persona management stations" that various US military & intelligence services have been procuring and using. I've only heard it framed as foreign language propaganda targeted at conflict areas, but it isn't hard to see the temptation to target US based sites of International appeal.