I don't think they're petty personal attacks. They are important concerns which I share.
Regardless, since this particular member of the project has clear incentives to be biased in favor of Google, they should have recused themselves, and asked another member of the project/moderator of the list to judge whether the message was appropriate.
Chandler is as related to the person responsible for putting musl in Fuchsia as are any two randomly selected software developers from anywhere in the industry. Having to disqualify someone from moderating a mailing list based on the union of all the conflicts of interest of tens of thousands of unrelated people is very silly.
Him moderating is a volunteer position, and he's been doing it forever.
(He's also an llvm foundation board member, etc).
Truthfully, I think the drive by commentary by HN on a community they appear to have about 10 minutes experience dealing with is a much worse look than what chandler did here.
It's funny to watch an entire group of people assume they understand the situations, motives, and community, based on a sample size of "1-2 emails".
If anyone actually bothered to look at the history of his moderation, you'd see he's incredibly consistent in his moderation. In fact, he's publicly called out me before for something similar, despite the fact that I was his boss's boss.
So I don't think it's reasonable to claim what should be happening here when the community itself has not asked for anything different - in fact, it's been quite happy with it.
If you want to become part of that community and then suggest change, by all means, you are more than welcome to join and contribute.
Regardless, since this particular member of the project has clear incentives to be biased in favor of Google, they should have recused themselves, and asked another member of the project/moderator of the list to judge whether the message was appropriate.