Maybe not necessarily unwarranted, but certainly unhelpful.

It doesn't really add to interesting/thoughtful discussion in the spirit of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Particularly:

> Don't be snarky. Converse curiously

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

These subthreads never really go anywhere, other than fan the flames of Google hate.

Again, not necessarily saying they're not warranted, but for folks looking for interesting discussion, it can certainly add noise to the signal.