Comment by otherme123

It doesn't sound that conspiratory: someone of the millions of subscribers of Veritasium watches the video and thinks that is good content suited for HN, but instead of linking the video itself (rarely video links raise upvotes here) it links the primary source.

But even if the paper was "promoted" (i.e. a link submitted), what is bad about it? People seem to find it interesting, and unless there are upvoting bots involved, posting links is the raison d'être of this site.