Considering what happened to r/ethereum and r/ethtrader after the dao attack, it wouldn't surprise me if certain people even hired masses of "trolls, FUD'ers" just to completely mask the reality of everything that was happening. I still to this day don't understand why so much chaos ensued cause they wanted to create a hardfork to prevent the dao theft.
This is something I have been seeing happening in more and more communities lately, and I'm glad Steemit is getting a reputation for accounts going to prevent these "attacks".