There's always manual manipulation. In the early days of the site, the saying was "without manual manipulation, the front page would be nothing but cat pictures". Today, it's clear that it would be nothing but Musk stories.

I'm actually completely fine with internal manual manipulation, bc I trust the HN crew.

I'm concerned that what we're observing is a result of external manipulation at the behest of self-interested parties.

Here's evidence of this concern: https://hnrankings.info/43004889/

Thinking about it, I consider it possible that pg is afraid of the Trump administration. He rightfully called David Sacks names for his actions in the Parker Conrad case. It might be subjective, but I believe that since the election, his language on his Twitter feed has changed significantly as well. I believe he wants no further conflict - the paypal mafia has too much power to harm him now.