Yes. I followed a group of Russian trolls around for a bit and they will systematically seed right wing social media with shit stories. It'll start on far-right sources and if the story picks up steam, it'll migrate to more mainstream sites, like twitter, where it's usually repeated by right wing politicians.
Fake news sites are built and referenced until a site with better standing quotes the articles and is listed as the original source.
If you did deep enough, you can usually trace stories back to Kremlin run outlets as well. However, by the time you have done all the digging and research, the next new conspiracy is already topping the charts.
Many of the mega-posters on .ml follow the same patterns, actually. You can guess their timezones by when they post and comment and their day job seems to be posting on social media between 9-5. In the case of Lemmy, it seems to be used as a jump-off point for actual fake news sites. (Fake news sites are rarely used as headlines and are more used as comment fodder during any arguments.)
While I am picking on right wing and tankie stuff here, this applies to any opportunity to spread shit with a variety of agendas and no political views are immune.
A hypothesis is absolutely fair game. I am not going to spend the time to prove it right or wrong in this case, but it's still 100% legit in my book.
(Just don't go telling your child spawn that space pot... err.. space teapots are definitely the reason that time travel could be possible.)