I assume an unfortunate number of investors track such things, however.
And in any case - this site already lets companies shill things on HN and has a whole community of investors and other startups there to back them up. I guess the transparency is what makes it not astroturfing - but it's rather close don't you think?
Rules that discourage "shallow dismissals" go too far in the other direction - and all you get is founder-template, linked-in overly congratulatory "compliments".
Rules that discourage "read the fucking article" comments go too far in the other direction - and all you get is deeply reactionary, underinformed and waaay over-confident.
Of course, the only way to know these things would be to assess based on actual merits - it doesn't seem like the site operators agree with this assessment (that degradation of comment quality is largely self-inflicted due to the curation of a "yes!" (or, equally - a "yes, and...") culture.
Tech startup culture has similar issues, so I'm not really surprised. It does suck however to lose so much respect for your colleagues (speaking hyperbolically/poetically).