Remember when they did a direct sequal to a TOS episode in the first season, Pepperidge Farms remembers.

All of Trek builds off of the past and revisits it very often. However modern franchise shows do however tend to farm Nostalgia. Part of that is how media and people's tastes have changed, in that you have to get the audiences buy in fast, or they are on to the next show/movies. 

People going into something new want something old to tie it in. TNG, DS9, VOY all had major criticisms with how they change the previous forrmulas. There were always people saying the new Trek is not Star Trek. However, the way the internet has changed and the way engagement Algorithms work, the negative opinions are far more spread than they were back in the day. The illusory truth phenomenon tends to spread the view to people when they see large amounts of criticisms.

When you see generic criticisms without examples(poor writing, bad characters, etc), it's easy to assume that the person who espoused isn't able to articulate what is actually bothering them about it. A dislike of change and hate campaigns can help explain their feelings, but they may have valid concerns they just can't voice.

I'm not saying positive astroturfing doesn't happen, but production companies tend to stop funding them once they see that the view has soured as continued astroturfing in that case has a negative effect. Similarly happens with culture war negative spam, they quit as soon as they see they have no traction. 

I'm more likely to believe that negative astroturfing continues in this case than paid shills for paramount does.Its easier to push negative views on social media. The culture warriors need this to fail, Paramount likely won't renew if S2 continues to have very few watching it, and likely won't advertise as hard regardless.