The HN algorithm is and has always been optimized to rank up posts that contain well-mannered discussions and to penalize threads that contain poor-mannered discussions. In practice, that means ranking up topics around which there is general consensus and ranking down topics where there is strong disagreement. That stems from a thesis that visitors come to this site for well mannered discussions and that the cost in long term user behavior from poor behavior makes any such topic counterproductive to have at the top of the list, regardless of the topic and regardless of the importance of the topic.

The topic here is almost certain to bring out activity that the system views as signals of disagreement, meaning it is algorithmically almost guaranteed to be down ranked, if it hasn't already been.