Post that have more comments than points, for example, get massively deranked rather quickly.

The reason this is done is to remove from the front page hot-button topics (i.e. controversial political news), but often this also includes friendly, niche posts with vibrant conversation, which is very sad to see. These tend to have < 1 upvote/comment ratio than most "Generic tech-adjacent news" like "Apple releases new iPhone".

For example, the Ask HN I posted a few hours ago suffered the same fate: https://hnrankings.info/39788649/: from #13 on the frontpage, to 3rd page in minutes.

Last time I saw it happen on a lovely post about Forth and its various implementations over the decades — not really at risk of flame wars, but alas.