Ah, the argument to motive. The fallacy of negating the content by challenging or criticizing the motive.
I can't speak for the others but in my case I have been parsing the semantics of what-is-an-appraisal on this forum for over 20 years.
Some of the reasoning relating to "who-is-doing-what" in an appraisal got developed pre-HVCC back during the ZAIO wars. The company's SRA did everything he could to avoid disclosing - under questioning from appraisers - the point that the reality that their "ZAIO-2055 in 60 seconds" was actually an AVM. An AVM that was using the local appraiser's pre-qualified data and modeling, but an AVM nonetheless. The appraiser's actual opinion of value (in the form of agreement with the AVM) wasn't occurring until a day or two after the "pre-signed" report was delivered. They were trying to conflate their AVM-on-2055 with a conventional 2055 as if it was the appraiser who actually formed their opinion of value as of that day when in fact it wouldn't have been occurring until after the fact.
An earlier example that recurred on a regular basis was the practice of supervisors checking the "did inspect" box on the basis of looking at the pics their trainee took when they did the solo inspection. Trainee working alone on the inspection wasn't the issue, but rather the lie that the supervisor personally inspected when they were not doing so.
So, "who is doing what" is a question that has previously been debated at length on this forum. I wasn't hacking out 1004s for MBs back then, either. But I was teaching USPAP and the laws/regs courses and others. So I had an interest in challenging the blatant untruths of some of these arguments on the basis of their respective untruths.