"The influencer is non-technical" and "It's strange to see these claims being taken at face value on a technical forum," to me, reads as a dismissal. As in, "these claims are not true and this person doesn't have the background to comment." Non-technical doesn't need to be an insult to be dismissive. You are giving us a reason not to down weight their perspective, but since the outcome is the same regardless of their background, I don't think that's productive.

I don't really see where you said the output was "bad," you said it was a compression artifact which had a "swimming effect", but I don't really see any acknowledgement that the influencer had a point or that the transformation was functionally a filter because it changed their appearance above and beyond losing detail (made their eyes bigger in a way an "anime eyes" filter might).

If I've misread you I apologize but I don't really see where it is I misread you.