There are growing sentimental, denialist, conspiracy, narratives on social media that anything that paint US being out of proportion has to be fake. It's up there with flat earths and "birds don't exist" theories. From the article...

  > The true population of the world, Bonesaw said, was significantly less than 1 billion people.

This isn't the first time I had encountered this specific type of ... char arrays. I think the major part of the author's intent is to just vent.