The HN algo is intentionally obscure to prevent people from gaming the system. For example, if there's a bunch of traffic going directly to the discussion link, it will heavily punish the weighting of the post as it's assumed the OP is sharing the link to farm upvotes. There's a bunch of other black magic involved in the HN ranking system so to try and understand it based on numbers alone is a waste of time.

I've seen this cited around here frequently, and I don't doubt that there were good intentions for implementing it that way. However, in my anecdotal experience, I've noticed that otherwise high-quality and thought-provoking posts that happen to be critical of the tech industry (or other VC/SV-aligned interests) seem disproportionately impacted by algorithmic deranking.

I acknowledge that it may be pure coincidence, but the problem with an opaque system is that deliberate antagonism can't be categorically excluded as a possibility. And considering the financial interests of the platform's ownership, I'm also not convinced we should extend the benefit of the doubt very far, either.