Yeah you'll never know for sure. Actual tankies are what like a small subset of the small percent of progressives. Fractions of a fraction. Statistically they are non-existent. There is an outsized presense online. So one could reason that most of them you encounter are acting in bad faith. It's been a very effective weapon on information warfare.

My philosophy is to abide by the oldest rule of the internet. Don't feed the trolls.