PageRank was supposed to be a probability distribution of the likelihood of someone clicking a link.
When that changed, Google broke [because PageRank broke].
See also how AdSense should have passed PageRank (but obviously doesn’t).
It took recent events to expose publicly what a number of folks have been saying more quietly for a while.
Add my RSS feed to your reader if you want to stay up to date before the crowd gets up to date (and ruins things for you ).