65% of Hacker News Posts Have Negative Sentiment, and They Outperform

Re:65% of Hacker News Posts Have Negative Sentiment, and The... by pjc50 on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @10:49AM (#46513821)

> "most likely to get upvoted" for which "Richard Stallman is Dead" is the optimal title

This is extremely funny, and reminds me of the famous newspaper headline "Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead". Of course, at time of writing, RMS is still alive and the optimal headline is a falsehood..

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Re:65% of Hacker News Posts Have Negative Sentiment, and The... by PaulHoule on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @12:30PM (#46515467)

My system uses logistic regression on words and it thinks that HN (1) really likes Richard Stallman and (2) really likes obituaries so put them together and that headline gets a great score.

I bet if it was put in as "fake news" it would get hundreds of votes and comments before dang took it down. And when it does happen for real it will certainly get 1000s votes.

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Re:65% of Hacker News Posts Have Negative Sentiment, and The... by Kye on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @01:28PM (#46516416)

For example: my #2 submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38468326

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Re:65% of Hacker News Posts Have Negative Sentiment, and The... by TeMPOraL on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @02:27PM (#46517290)

> Of course, at time of writing, RMS is still alive and the optimal headline is a falsehood..

That's where Betteridge's law of headlines comes to the rescue! Just rephrase the headline as a question - "Is Richard Stallman dead?".

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