I think the message is don't trust Steam Charts for accurate statistics.
The early GalNet report was posted less than an hour before the 6th (UTC time). That wasn't enough time to reach the entire community and kill everyone's enthusiasm. Many, many people were still playing and traveling to the Gnosis right up until downtime at 7:00am, and after downtime, the servers were so slammed with people trying to get back on that I couldn't get past the main menu until an hour later.
Now, it's obvious that the Cone Sector event was a failure for the most part. But there's just no way that the 6th had a record low of players. A record low happens when nothing is going on, and the 6th was probably the most eventful day in ED since the CMDR Salome thing. If any day was going to bring a new record low in players, it would be today, the 7th, because now everybody knows what happened to the Gnosis without needing to log in.
Ignorance is bliss. The Steam Charts tell facts. There is a reason the company created such a thing - it's certainly not a fan toy or fiction which is what seems to be implied. Frankly, your response suggests you've 'drank the Koolaid' and don't want to look at data without bias.