There was never even the slightest chance that that balloon could pass through US airspace unobserved, and China possesses FAR more effective, secure and difficult-at-best methods with which to spy. So very obviously, it was intended to be discovered. And presuming that to be the case, the important bit then was the reaction its discovery would trigger.
So it was safe to presume from the start (as I did) that some significant part of the social media noise about it was simple astroturfing explicitly intended solely to further whatever response whoever wanted.