Complaining is not focusing your efforts on fixing something. Fixing is fixing. Complaining is complaining. When you complain about a problem instead of helping to build a solution, you become part of the problem.
I don't think this article said anything bad about polite and constructive criticism.
I'm disagreeing with the articles point of view that the people on Hacker News and other outlets are just complaining about something. Often times people will take any sort of negative discussion and consider it "complaining" regardless of the actual content.
Complaining is not focusing your efforts on fixing something. Fixing is fixing. Complaining is complaining. When you complain about a problem instead of helping to build a solution, you become part of the problem.
I don't think this article said anything bad about polite and constructive criticism.