TBH I don’t think it makes sense to suggest that the sockpuppeting was from others on the thread. To establish that MN HQ would need to have looked at every user on the thread, and why would they do that?
And where was all the troll hunting? I read the majority of that thread and I didn’t see it, and usually when there is and MN HQ have no reason to doubt the OP they’ll put a message on the thread telling posters to rein it in. But I didn’t see much of it in the first place.
I think it’s worth remembering that there have been genuine threads here over the years. I’ve been here for 17 years and when MN was much smaller posters recognised each other’s names and talked openly about their lives etc. There was the poster whose dd died of SIDS when she was two and MN’ers did a mile walk to raise money for the SIDS foundation, Misdee’s dh who waited for a heart and had a transplant (I often wonder about her), Onlyjoking whose dh had a brain tumour, and expat’s dd who passed away, and all of those were genuine, so it doesn’t necessarily follow that every emotive thread is a fake.
But there are often signs that it likely is. The scenario yesterday was believeable to a point, my BIL’s SIL was a bit like this when his brother died, not taking him away etc but constantly calling him, wanting him to come over and help her with things etc. But that was in the beginning, and she moved on with her life over time.
But when the OP started becoming more and more dramatic to the point that when she messaged the SIL to say that DH was on his way with MIL who was being moved and she responded that it wasn’t anything like becoming.a widow so young and that this was the house where her babies were born… I mean come on. It’s clear the OP got carried away at that point, probably because she was being believed, and people will believe anything in some instances.