[grepherder]

What's the harm? Even if it's a mass hysteria (a bit of a hyperbole), it's certainly not one of those destructive ones (TSA et al.). At worst people wrote some overly dramatic stuff on social media and wasted a small amount of our time here, at best it raised the alarms pre-emptively and (hopefully) prevented any company having such thoughts from doing so by raising social awareness.

[petdance]

Same harm as any other spewing of unlikely but plausible stories.

Same harm as repeating the story about not flashing your brights at another car lest they come kill you. Just wasted time and overly dramatic.

Same harm in telling about how Rod Stewart had to have his stomach pumped because there was a gallon of semen in it. Just wasted time and overly dramatic.

Same harm in parroting a story you heard about some virus that will make your computer blow up. Just wasted time and overly dramatic.

There's no direct harm, but we're gullible enough as a society already. Living in a Headline Nation is teaching us that we don't need to think for ourselves. When the only facts we have about a story is that "they" are doing something bad, then we'll believe most anything.