I think this is being overblown.

It appears to me that Apple and/or Gruber style articles just happen to trigger the flame war dector that HN has implemented which demotes posts (to keep HN more balanced in what content is promoted & civil).

Nothing malicious. And it’s hard to argue HN isn’t better off with the flame war dector, than not having it at all.

As seen by this search:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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Also, why didn’t Gruber just contact dang to ask at hn@ycombinator.com

As someone in the press, it seems Gruber should know better than to create flame bait articles if he didn’t bother to even ask the mods.