I don't think it's a hit job. It's a side effect of the covid crisis, which is itself an instance of the 'major ongoing story' dynamic on internet forums: black hole story attracting all mass. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22751116.

In fact, the wave of objections ('why is X taking over HN') is a manifestation of the same dynamic; it's just the second-order version of it. When those get repeated enough, we'll start to hear 'why are complaints about X taking over HN taking over HN'. At that point the dynamic probably does a meltdown into something else.

(I'm not making fun of you or anyone. All these responses are genuine and make sense on an individual level. But the larger patterns are also predictable.)