The thread reached the top of Hacker News, then went to #15. It spent 5 hours on the front page, which is a lot longer than it would have if the topic hadn't been YC-related. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41732846 for more.
The article only states that the post was deliberately lowered in the rankings to reduce its visibility. "Is this true" ? What your explanation is hinting at, although you're not saying it outright, is that "Yes, that's true." The graph posted below speaks for itself.
dang|1 year ago
atxbcp|1 year ago