You think that DO sent out a shill to pretend to be a throwaway to give hackernews confidence in the DO platform?

My read of this is very different than yours: Naive IC who doesn't have optics into the actual mechanization of the business trusting the CTO fully.

I think this message from the CTO is a partial truth as they often are in orgs that aren't extremely internally transparent.

AKA I don't think the "shilling" is working if that's what they were doing.

Your read is probably more practical than mine, and fits in better with a "don't assume malice" standpoint. I just know that social media (of which HN is begrudgingly a member) can very effectively be swayed.