HN has a long history of impartiality on ycombinator matters, so I don't think such accusations should be made without evidence of a pattern of it happening consistently.

As the OP, I had the same thought and conflict of interest assumption.

It has made me query the moderation as you could squint and class it as low-quality content, however, I feel (agnostic of being the OP) it's highly relevant news to the HN audience.