It's an incorrect and jarring usage of the phrase. Plenty of folks on HN are non-native speakers who benefit from knowing when colloquialisms are used incorrectly.
The transitive form "Begs the question <question>" is long attested, quite common, very clear and readily distinguishable from the intransitive form "Begs the question" [with no direct object], which refers to the petitio principii fallacy, when people prefer a translation into somewhat archaic English to the Latin.
In fact, the attempts I've seen to quantify usages (including those by prescriptivist pedants still trying to pedal the idea that the intransitive usage is the only correct one) find the transitive usage to be the most common, even in publication.
The intransitive use can even be seen as a generalization and rationalization of the transitive use, wherein the transitive use becomes equivalent to the intransitive use with an implied direct object of "the question which the argument was intended to resolve", which (while not the original etymology of the intransitive form) actually makes the intransitive form sensible and has a closer relation to the modern English sense of the words in the phrase than the original etymology of the intransitive usage.
Prescriptivist pedantry on this point is, if this is possible, even more obnoxiously pointless than that directed against the singular usage of "they".
In fact, the attempts I've seen to quantify usages (including those by prescriptivist pedants still trying to pedal the idea that the intransitive usage is the only correct one) find the transitive usage to be the most common, even in publication.
The intransitive use can even be seen as a generalization and rationalization of the transitive use, wherein the transitive use becomes equivalent to the intransitive use with an implied direct object of "the question which the argument was intended to resolve", which (while not the original etymology of the intransitive form) actually makes the intransitive form sensible and has a closer relation to the modern English sense of the words in the phrase than the original etymology of the intransitive usage.
Prescriptivist pedantry on this point is, if this is possible, even more obnoxiously pointless than that directed against the singular usage of "they".