Diluting with noise is group manipulation 101, 4chan was unusable in the days leading to the election. Look at the number of people triggered by the non-sequitur intelligence test stuff right now.
I'm half of the opinion still that JA was v& / "replaced" as of 2016, everyone quickly forgets how half the internet went down for a good day around that time due to some kind of "Mass DDOS" iirc, and there was speculation it was an effort to slow down / stop a deadman switch from triggering.