"I thought people on a website called _hacker_ news would be supportive of a ruling allowing small app creators alternative payment system? "

This is also ycombinator, and thus hacker culture is an means to be exploited by investors who are looking to grow unicorns. Such investors won't tolerate any restrictions on their path to growth as it threatens their entire value proposition.

So, we arrive at the natural conclusion: hackernews is only partially aware of its own narrative dissonance. This is how topics like this one can have hackers rooting for underdogs that will never get a meaningful win out of Apple. While others cheer on Apple and defend its practices as they see themselves temporarily embarrassed founders of the next trillion dollar company and they can't have any roadblocks to that growth.

And then there are some unaffiliated with either hacker or founder culture and their opinions on this topic are naturally as varied as anyone else's.