I'm kind of on the fence about it and have a similar feeling. I don't mean to undermine the effort he has put in over all the years. That's definitely commendable. But I have strong suspicions that he's becoming an AI influencer, with his own AI focused newsletter, so chances are major AI companies are approaching him. And also to be honest, I see far too many posts making it to the front page. @dang I trust in the moderators keeping things neutral. Just in this thread alone there are a few comments that got heavily down voted for simply having a different opinion.
Most of my posts that make it on Hacker News weren't submitted by me. You can see who is submitting what on https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=simonwillison.net - including a few that I submitted which got nowhere at all.
I accept paid sponsors for my blog (the banner at the top of each page) and newsletter (a clearly marked sponsored message at the top). I try to stay at arms length from those as much as I can - I want it to be very clear that sponsoring me will not result in me writing about a company.
Which comments do you feel were unfairly downvoted? I can take a look but would need specific links.