I imagine DICE is more inclined to use the actual CA player count, rather than a reddit post. It's not like it's popularity or lack thereof is a mystery, they know who's playing it and when (unless they're offline).
So if plenty of people are playing it, they're going to support it, no matter how many people on reddit claim they're not.
I also imagine the team working on CA is probably small, would not otherwise be designing new maps. It's not like the entirety of DICE is putting time into this; they delegate. Since CA is just placing NPCs and structures on already existing maps, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just two devs and a tester working on this.
The most accurate comment, yes.
There are way more people playing that mode than the community might think and like stated on my other comment, the new CA missions did not affect any more map creation by any shape or form.