"Blatantly being artificially pushed" is an odd way to describe 100% normal behavior. I never stop being surprised at how people put whatever they label they like on whatever they imagine they're seeing, without even the slightest check.

Would you please read the site guidelines and stick to them? You broke them egregiously here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think newer/more recent posts can hit the front page with fewer upvotes as a way for potentially interesting topics to get out of “new”. I wonder if it could also be a function of how many users are currently on the site? So late on a Saturday night perhaps it only requires a handful of upvotes for a new post to hit the front page while a post in the middle of the day during the week would need more.

Either way, this definitely isn’t the first time I’ve seen something on the front page with only a few votes so I’m certain it’s nothing nefarious.

Don't mods boost certain links they think are interesting?

But here is a story that deserves on frontpage, but didn't

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27941820