I think it's a good thing to frighten users just a little bit. Arch is no longer a niche distro and it was only a matter of time before someone took advantage of the generally unvetted AUR. It's a wake-up call that the times of good faith are gone and you need to pay attention.

Seriously. It's technically true that there was a RAT on the AUR but the way it's titled is written to intentionally invoke times where it was more than one thing.

Just standard clickbait, but sounds more serious because we understand the extent to which they're going out of their way to bend and withhold the facts.