HN's criterion is whether a post is intellectually interesting, or more precisely whether it can support an intellectually interesting discussion. What's nice about that is you can decide it by looking at the article itself, and the thread—you don't need to know nebulous things like the intentions behind the post. I'd say the current post clears the bar fairly easily. Here are a couple of past explanations about this, in case they're of interest:
As for negative/challenging/sceptical: that depends on the quality of the comment. Thoughtful critique is always welcome. Shallow dismissals and snark are not welcome—not that the target of the criticism always deserves better, but the community deserves better.
Thanks for the response dang. Someone below has brought to my attention that my comment doesn’t sit within within the guidelines - might it be best for me to edit it with something relevant to the article?
Out of curiosity, and regardless of this case, how do you deal with artificial manipulation of sentiment on HN?
Nudging the views of one of the most active developer communities in the world has value if you were an adversary. Do you see signs of this?
And if the campaign is sustained over a long period, with all comments/threads being within the guidelines, but heavily biased, how does one defend against it?
It would be naive to assume Reddit is the only platform that manipulates user sentiment. And despite the average user here being more capable of critical thinking, we are all still fallible. Can you speak to any of this?
Their CEO is here in part because he's been with YC nearly since the beginning (he was the cofounder of Twitch and JustinTV). He's one of the first users of HN, and is definitely a long standing member of the community.
It's a marketing ploy only in the sense that they just launched public signups and wanted to let us know about it.
The motivations for my comment was seeing well-meaning comments being downvoted for no apparent reason. On the other end of the spectrum, and perhaps more importantly, someone claiming the car is so safe that they jumped out in front of it without the driver noticing, and it stopped safely. Does that, to you, seem like a responsible thing to post, even assuming it were true?
As for the breaking of rules, dang has commented, and I’ll take responsibility for my actions.
You should just read them when you have a chance since they address the stuff you bring up simply and directly. Don't start meta-threads about votes. Don't accuse fellow users of shillage, brigading, astro-turfing, etc, without evidence. If you suspect abuse, email the mods. It's all in there, along with the rationale.
If it's not it should be, this is cool stuff, a little shilling on a capitalist inspired news site should be expected and I think we're smart enough to sort the BS out from the good stuff.
I can’t help but think this thread may be a marketing ploy. If this were the case, is it allowed on HN?
Edit: In addition, any negative/challenging/sceptical comment is quickly downvoted.