It's a hackernoon opinion blog post, not the New York Times. And you don't need a citation for something that is clearly meant to be hyperbole.
[Citation needed] has gone from a notation about checking facts to a trendy response whenever someone doesn't like something they read in a blog post or comment.
If the author is going to make such extraordinary claims, I expect to see some research to back it up. There are plenty of metrics: google trends, headline count, tweet count etc. Since he hasn't done the legwork, and the claim rings false, I'm calling him out.
[Citation needed] has gone from a notation about checking facts to a trendy response whenever someone doesn't like something they read in a blog post or comment.