It off the flamewar detector, a,k.a. the overheated discussion detector. I've turned that off now - this is obviously a serious article.

HN generally downvotes and/or flags anything that paints ycombinator in a bad light. As Altman was president of yc from 2014 to 2019 that could be why this is getting downvoted.

Articles critical of Airbnb, one of yc's biggest wins, also get flagged and taken down.