Pieter Levels' Data Shows Negative Posts Get 2.5x More Views

Last updated Jun 29, 2026

Analyzing 743 posts since 1996 that totaled 5.8 billion views, Levels found negative content averaged 1.1 million views each across 217 entries, outpacing positive posts' 429,000 average over 348 entries. Critical posts led at 966,000 views per post, while curious ones hit 1.3 million, suggesting builders can win big by sparking interest over complaints. His sentiment has shifted from early optimism to balanced realism, with 2026 data showing negativity dipping as platforms tweak algorithms.

This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.

What people suspect is indeed true Negative content performs much better About 1.5x better than positive content But curious content (like hacky projects) comes in second, which is great news for me! levels.io/stats

Thanks

@RichDoesTech

for the tip Normalized by posts, negative posts do 2.5x better in algorithm than positive!

Replying to @levelsio

This is where I wish

@elonmusk

would fix the algo... - Negative: 230M views / 217 posts = ~1.06M views per post - Positive: 148.4M views / 346 posts = ~429K views per post So negative posts average about 2.5x more views per post than positive posts.

Also interesting is the sentiment over time, proportionally (every block is a blog post or tweet) You see more positive posts 2013-2020 and then positive/negative starts balancing, I think it is related to when you are starting out and trying to make it you have to really force

Re: algorithm changes to more positive 2025 was by far the year whre negative posts did best 2026 mixed posts increased by 3%, positive and neutral posts increased by 1% and negative decreased by 5%, so the algo did indeed get more positive I think!