How is it "shoving" anything into "people's faces"? It says "We're not getting revenue value out of it." Are you offended to find out that being on the front page is nearly economically valueless?

37s is attacked all the time by a tiny, but very loud minority. I'm sure that they wrote this not because they personally care, but because if nobody demonstrates that this loud, tiny minority is wrong, that loud, tiny minority has the only voice that people will hear.

It's valuable for the quiet majority to understand that A) traffic may be nice, but B) that doesn't mean being on the front page of HN is a good plan for revenue growth.