They're talking about the XY problem-problem. The problem when other programmers mistakenly think you have an XY problem and ignore your words.
Sometimes, the original poster is not mistaken. Especially when an expert asks a question, there's a reason for it. Assuming the expert to be a beginner who hasn't tried easier solutions is degrading, and forces experts off the site.
Actively insulting your userbase, especially your expert-level userbase, is a bad idea. It leads to StackOverflow falling and collapsing over the years.
I never saw this term before, but it is perfect. So many times I have experienced it when asking questions in mature tech domains. It is so frustrating. Frequently, my question is asked poorly from the view of an expert, so they sweep it aside as not a real problem. Only after getting help (from comments) to provide more info or improve the writing, does the expert suddenly agree it is an issue.
This is also why I no longer waste my time raising bug tickets for open source projects. You just get shouted down and feel terrible about yourself. I raised many "WONTFIX" bugs in my career against open source projects. What a waste of my time and a harm to my self esteem.
I was active on SO years ago and my answers and questions typically are either upvoted to large number, or downvoted to a large number despite my best attempt at explaining the context.
So I do know this problem (problem-problem) very well and I've since stopped asking or answering on SO.
I was learning Golang nearly a decade ago while participating in a performance competition.. Asking questions about unsafe in Golang Nuts was nearly rage inducing.
IMHO Copilot Chat has picked up on these bad habits.
I've noticed a similar tendency in ChatGPT (answering a question that was never asked), but at least in ChatGPT it doesn't act all condescending towards you.
I literally cannot remember when last SO was useful time, due to the false positive identification of the XY problem.
At least with ChatGPT, it's much faster to get it to answer the question asked and not the question that was not asked.
https://xyproblem.info/