[bleachedsleet]

If I tell you the sky is green the best way to refute that to your audience is to ignore me entirely as a person and instead tell people to go outside and look up: Show them some evidence and factually refute my claim. You don’t say “this man isn’t a sky expert, has never spoken to sky experts, and should therefore be dismissed!”

The parent comment’s point would seem to be that this person is making a claim that should be refutable with evidence. But the evidence is Facebook’s own data supporting her claim so they can’t do that. Instead, they diminish her credibility. It’s not “smearing” in the sense of calling her a baby eater, but it is a credentials fallacy meant to make people dismiss her claims regardless of validity.

[caminante]

I get an argument that it's not pure, ad hominem character attacks as a "smear".

This is really more a flaw of the article, but can you add data that directly refutes the claims raised by this article?

e.g. in her leaked emails, does any of that refute the wording/claims raised in this article?

I'm asking in good faith.

[ipaddr]

If the person never saw a sky before or never worked on facebook sky but passed by a window and saw a green sky and freaked out I would mention it. Context matters.