Yes, I think that thread eliminates the second of my three alternatives.
The difference between 1) and 3) is whether the tidyverse aspires to becoming the primary mode through which users interact with R, at least during the data preparation and exploratory analysis stages.
Suppose you are writing a package. At this point, using, e.g. dplyr in your package code entail a larger maintenance cost because dplyr is still rapidly evolving. But that cost may be partly, fully, or more than fully offset by the benefit of familiarity as the tidyverse becomes a more "standard" method of interacting.