They're downboted into grey because it's complaining about the future of this thread before it has even happened. Also it's conspiratorial, without much evidence.
That used to be the case even before when Alphabet/Apple/Meta were negatively commented upon, I used to blame it in many of the users here (and who also happen to work for those companies) not wanting to see their total comps go down, but this right here I think that can squarely be blamed on AI-bots.
I think this is one of HNs biggest weaknesses. If you are a sufficiently large engineering organization with enough employees that pass the self-moderation karma thresholds, you can essentially strike down any significantly critical discussion.
Without a public moderation log (i.e. even user flags being part of the log) claims like this will always come up but to me it always seems more likely just the early commenting users tired of being told they are part of some astroturf campaign and if they don't flock to agree with the OPs views it must just be more proof.
I'm sure both reasons happen to some degree, just as a matter of how often is actual astroturfing vs "a small percentage of active people can't possibly just have different thoughts than me".
