We need to do something and are working on it. The challenge is to distinguish thoughtful critique from negativity-venting. The former is fine, the latter is lame. HN has a lot of the latter.
I believe it has to do with macro trends (in society at large and on the internet), which we can't expect to be immune from—but also with the community here getting insular. That scares and worries me, because HN won't survive over the long haul if new cohorts of users don't keep showing up. Along with that, there seem to be increased waves of jadedness, bitterness, and cynicism that use this place as a dumping ground for bad feelings.
That's a bad dynamic. The more it happens, the more it encourages more of it. Meanwhile, people who don't enjoy jaded, bitter, or denunciatory rhetoric are incentivized to leave: a classic vicious circle.
This is why we added the following to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html last year: Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative.
You'll probably see more statements from us about this in 2026, and hopefully some changes to HN, as we try to do something about it.