Comment by ronnier

1 day ago

The political posts have definitely increased and the front page is increasingly filled with negative sentiment posts that leaves one angered and not filled with a positive light. For years I didn’t flag anything. Now I’m daily flagging political posts.

> filled with negative sentiment posts that leaves one angered and not filled with a positive light

You mean the negative sentiments that you get when people uncover how big tech/monopolies/government really works ? I guess you would rather read la-la-land stories about the entrepreneurial aces of the 2010s when techies and the general populace were still gullible for that.

  • Negativity doesn't have to fill every space, even if you can find negativity everywhere. Maybe what HN has implicitly (and maybe explicitly) nurtured is intellectual curiosity for the sake of intellectual curiosity, which, in mi opinion es very orthogonal to negativity (even if it's intellectual adjacent).

    I understand that maybe this is not what everyone wants (or understands) from HN, but I do sympathize with the other comment: after visiting HN I'd rather be happy and curious that angered and curious

  • Yes. That’s not what I want to read on hn. You can go to Reddit or many other places for that and fill yourself with anger all you want. I personally do not want that for me and if hn continues the way it’s headed then I’ll block it like I did Reddit.

    • LinkedIn still caters to people who want more pro-corporate propaganda. Can check it out.

    • Discussions are just discussions. You can always opt out not participate. HN's guidelines make discussions here are a lot more civil than reddit.

      1 reply →

As I'm always telling people, the phenomenon you're noticing is that the President of the United States wishes to increase negative sentiment and widen the scope of things which are subject to politics. It's not something that HN or its users get a choice in. If you don't like it, I'm with you, but you're going to have to take it up with him.

What you’re noticing is called fifth generation warfare. Get people to feel bad about their country, government, community, etc.