Reddit CEO admits to altering user comments that were critical of him

This post is decaying off of the front page of HN very quickly (every few refreshes it drops a position or more), despite have more upvotes and being posted more recently. Reddit is a YC company as well. Is this post being artificially pushed down?

It's well known that HN has anti-flamewar algorithms. Too many comments vs votes (or user flagging too, presumably) causes its rank to drop.

I've been here fairly regularly for 8 years and didn't know about it, so I'm not sure I agree that it's "well known". It definitely isn't in the FAQ's section about how stories are ranked: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html -- which, in my opinion, would be an excellent place to describe it.

I'm glad dang answered though since I've been wondering for quite a while why some stories seemed to sink much faster than others.