I don’t think they’re saying that’s actually happening here, just that it could happen and is accidentally incentivized.

If it's a conspiracy, it would be one where the Minimum Viable Conspirator Count is 1 (inclusive of one's own self).

In that case, by that rubric literally anything that you conspire with yourself to accomplish (buying next week's groceries, making a turkey sandwich...) would also be a conspiracy.

The dead internet theory also sounded unhinged and conspiracy theory-ish a decade or so ago... yet here we are.