> Hacker News, probably noticeably since 2016 or so, has been a negative, curmudgeonly place. It has become political (toward the left), sclerotic, and bitterly nostalgic. It's bad and no longer represents the future. I notice it every time I visit. It's sad.

An easy way to help with the negativity is to stop leaving bait comments

I promise you Hacker News was exactly like this back in 2011.

> It has become political (toward the left)

I wonder what you're talking about - your definition of 'political' or 'left'.

Tech and politics are so deeply intrenched. More than just "is DEI evil and there's no such thing as algorithmic bias". Should Apple be restricted from collecting its Apple Tax and locking down its devices?? Should the EU be able to regulate American companies? Should governments demand encryption back doors in devices? Should Australia ban teens from social network? Should there be a Right to Repair for our devices?

Honestly one of my biggest gripes with HN is that it does seem to be a place where pretty regressive social viewpoints seem to flourish.

HN is so depressing, but at the same time so Im addicted to it. It’s like tiktok but for people who enjoy plain text and hacking related stuff. When I first visited HN more than 10 years ago (without account) like, 90% of the content was exciting and you got to learn something. Nowadays it’s about 40-50%, and the rest is crap (including comments). I have been trying to leave HN, let’s see if I can do it in 2026.

I disagree it's "toward the left" but I would also disagree if you said "toward the right". By that I mean I've observed BOTH extremes happening.

That's true of the US population in general too. Their quality of life has been decreasing due to accelerated globalization (sans the top ~10% of asset holders).

Hacker News, probably noticeably since 2016 or so, has been a negative, curmudgeonly place.

No it hasn't.

Is it "negative" to identify shitty things as being shitty? I wouldn't necessarily blame the commenters for that.

> It has become political (toward the left)

I don’t feel this way at all. Maybe it’s one of the only places you’re actually consuming mixed opinions.

You should definitely demand your money back.

comment from account created ~4 years before the supposed noticeable decline: Here's a content-free opinion post designed to trigger more of the negative comments I really hate, but I'll keep coming back.

The bitter politics can also be right wing and you can spot it when migration topics pop up.

What distinguishes so much of the right wing and left wing politics is that so much of it is angry and zero sum.

I've also been looking for greener pastures. Lobsters has better technical signal/noise but is much more bitter, zero sum, and political.

I see the same thing. I don't know why I even bother to post here, habit mainly. I know I'm not changing any minds.

Lmao sure. Every comment I make about unions gets downvoted, and every comment about "maybe it's okay to destroy the planet for one more solid quarter" shoots into the stratosphere.

More projection here than a drive-in movie theatre... This website sucks, but not because of any (incorrectly) perceived leftwing bias.

> It has become political (toward the left)

Clever people tend to be on the political left. Computery people tend to be on the left because they have a higher level of literacy.

That's also why there are no particularly successful right-wing comedians.

Once you understand this, you realize maybe it's not that something is wrong with LLMs, crypto, Google, Apple, Windows, Amazon, the US, Rust, not-rust, JavaScript, Israel, copyright & VCs. It's just a negative place.