I think that in academic work this is reasonable. People sometimes claim to have done something novel, when it is clearly a repetition of something older. Perhaps the citations of the works being criticized didn't make it clear that they were repeating an old idea. It allows the reader to see that there were relevant previous works that may have been subjected to criticism in the past and that those previous criticisms remain important for the more recent work. The question then is whether the recent work resolves those criticisms. The authors in this case seem not to think so.

A better paraphrase is the following: The new idea is not so new as some claim. It is 20 years old and was previously shown to be flawed in comparison to other approaches. Looking over 40 years of literature, one can see the flaws in the approach and how the flaws were subsequently resolved. Proponents of the "new idea" are either unaware of these advancements or are ignoring them.

I'd say that ignoring previous literature and work is a big problem is CS adjacent studies. My experience is being a theoretical linguist who interfaces with computational linguists. I have had colleagues receive criticism for citing work that is 10 years old or more, even if such a work represents the earliest example of a particular idea they are making use of. It is suggested that a more modern work should be cited. There is kind of an "anti-memory" culture that results from trying to make work seem cutting edge, even if a work is clearly an extension or reinvention of very old ideas.