Show HN: HN Sentiment API – I ranked tech CEOs by how much you hate them

Posted by kingofsunnyvale on Sunday December 21, 2025 @10:06AM
from the show-hn dept.

https://docs.hnpulse.com

I built an API that extracts entities from Hacker News comments and classifies sentiment towards them as positive, negative, or neutral. It also classifies overall comment sentiment and assigns each entity a label (person, location, date, technology, organization, other).

505k+ comments, Oct 31 - Present.

Here's the leaderboard:

LOVED:

- Steve Jobs: 44% positive, 7% negative

- Linus Torvalds: 43% positive, 5% negative

- Gabe Newell: 34% positive, 8% negative

MID:

- Bill Gates: 22% positive, 8% negative

- Tim Cook: 15% positive, 30% negative

- Bezos: 12% positive, 18% negative

HATED:

- Zuckerberg: 4% positive, 35% negative

- Sam Altman: 8% positive, 38% negative

- Musk: 5% positive, 45% negative

Try it yourself:

# Who does HN talk about the most?

curl "https://api.hnpulse.com/entities?label=person&sort=mentions"

# What are people saying about remote work?

curl "https://api.hnpulse.com/comments?entity=remote work&limit=3"

# Is OpenAI's reputation getting worse?

curl "https://api.hnpulse.com/trends?entity=openai&bucket=day"

# What technology gets mentioned alongside SF?

curl "https://api.hnpulse.com/entities?co-occur=SF&label=technolog..."

Stack: Go, PostgreSQL, GPT-4o mini for entity extraction

Docs: https://docs.hnpulse.com API: https://api.hnpulse.com

( 9 comments | 4 points | on HN )

Re:Show HN: HN Sentiment API – I ranked tech CEOs by how muc... by dzrmb on Sunday December 21, 2025 @10:13AM (#46345385)

Cool project! I'll definitely give it a go. Btw, did you use Elysia by any chance?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: HN Sentiment API – I ranked tech CEOs by how muc... by kingofsunnyvale on Sunday December 21, 2025 @10:28AM (#46345516)

Thanks! I used Go + Chi, with Scalar for the docs. Elysia looks cool though - will look into it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: HN Sentiment API – I ranked tech CEOs by how muc... by smt88 on Sunday December 21, 2025 @10:39AM (#46345588)

You're losing a lot from the binary here. Tim Cook isn't loved, sure, but it's rare to see someone rant about him the way they might about Bezos or Gates('s era of Microsoft)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: HN Sentiment API – I ranked tech CEOs by how muc... by verdverm on Sunday December 21, 2025 @03:13PM (#46347983)

Very neat, I want to do something similar with my own comments, to see how I interact online and get the Ai to nudge me to better communications

Do you have a ballpark figure for how many tokens or dollars the analysis took?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: HN Sentiment API – I ranked tech CEOs by how muc... by kingofsunnyvale on Sunday December 21, 2025 @06:56PM (#46349893)

It took 663,164,426 tokens and $238.21.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: HN Sentiment API – I ranked tech CEOs by how muc... by verdverm on Monday December 22, 2025 @03:02PM (#46358306)

that's... not terrible, thanks for sharing

I'd certainly be willing to spend a few hundred dollars organizing and annotating my collection of HN upvotes, chrome bookmarks, and social posts

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: HN Sentiment API – I ranked tech CEOs by how muc... by gigatexal on Sunday December 21, 2025 @03:32PM (#46348129)

What? DHH needs to be up there with Elon. SMH.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: HN Sentiment API – I ranked tech CEOs by how muc... by rsynnott on Monday December 22, 2025 @08:51AM (#46354106)

Kind of surprised about Bezos, though I suppose he lacks the extreme publicity seeking tendencies of the most-disliked.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: HN Sentiment API – I ranked tech CEOs by how muc... by kingofsunnyvale on Tuesday December 23, 2025 @10:52PM (#46372252)

Lately, I've been playing around with giving the API to claude-code to perform a sort of automated analysis of HN; this is what it says:

Analysis: Why Bezos Has Less Negative Sentiment

  The Numbers

  | Person     | Negative Sentiment | Total Mentions |
  |------------|--------------------|----------------|
  | Bezos      | 18-26%             | ~169           |
  | Zuckerberg | 35%                | ~201           |
  | Sam Altman | 38-43%             | ~501           |
  | Musk       | 39-45%             | ~1,119         |

  Bezos has roughly half the negative sentiment of the others AND is discussed 6-7x less than Musk.

  Your Hypothesis is Correct—But There's More

  1. Bezos is largely "retired" from controversy

  He stepped down as Amazon CEO in 2021. When he's mentioned on HN, it's mostly:
  - As a reference point for billionaire wealth alongside others ("Bezos/Musk/Ellison-type...")
  - Historical Amazon criticism ("Legacy of Bezos", "Day Two")
  - Generic billionaire tax discussions

  2. The others are making active, controversial decisions RIGHT NOW

  The co-occurrence data reveals what each person is discussed alongside:

  | Person     | Top Co-occurring Topics                           |
  |------------|---------------------------------------------------|
  | Musk       | Trump (61), Tesla, Twitter, DOGE (22), SpaceX     |
  | Altman     | OpenAI, ChatGPT, AGI, AI hype                     |
  | Zuckerberg | Facebook, Meta, Trump, censorship                 |
  | Bezos      | Amazon, Gates, other billionaires (as comparison) |

  3. Current actions generate current anger

  Looking at the negative comments:
  - Musk: "conman and liar", DOGE failures, political interference
  - Altman: "Scam Altman", AI resource hoarding, nonprofit betrayal
  - Zuckerberg: Censorship decisions, "kissing Trump admin's ring", Meta's social harm
  - Bezos: Mostly legacy Amazon issues or generic wealth criticism

  Conclusion

  It's not just that Bezos "seeks publicity less"—it's that he's not actively making decisions that affect the HN community. The others are:

  - Musk: Running Twitter/X (where many HN users are), advising Trump on government cuts
  - Altman: At the center of AI development that directly impacts tech workers
  - Zuckerberg: Making platform moderation decisions affecting global speech

  Bezos owns a newspaper and a space company but isn't making daily choices that intersect with tech workers' lives. He's transitioned from "active villain" to "historical reference."

[ Parent | on HN ]