Marc is likely a controversial character, which leads to people disagreeing about comments.

Lots of conflicting up votes and down votes is a signal HN uses to detect disagreement.

The HN algorithm is designed to promote good discussions, explicitly at the expense of discussions where people interact poorly with each other, even if those other conversations are important. Lots of disagreement is a common precursor to bad behavior, and the algorithm automatically pushes those posts down in the ranking.

Not a conspiracy. An algorithm that intentionally and successfully encourages well behaved commenters here, at the expense of some important topics algorithmically being pushed down.

What are some other examples of topics that, well gorsh-darn, the algorithm just had to push 'em down so we can all get along?

HN is an echo chamber.

The broad topic of this post might be especially relevant to HN: are we in danger of manipulating society through arrogance, elitism, greed, skewed perspective, bullying, collusion, influence-peddling, throwing around money/power, etc., and how would we know when we are.