As you have just described, accusations of virtue signalling are really accusations of people acting in bad faith by another name - and doing that without evidence of bad faith is corrosive and fallacious. Hacker News even has rules against it because it is not accepted as a valid form of argument. Just because the accusations aren't being levied against someone you're directly replying to here doesn't make it any better.

If you have reason to believe these people are bad faith actors, present the evidence directly rather than trying to sneak it in with weasel words.