Beware the vocal minority. Internet comment sections only tell you the sentiments of people who make comments.

HN comments sentiment seems to shift over the age of the thread and time of day.

My suspicion is that the initial comments are from people in the immediate social circle of the poster. They share IRC or Slack or Discord or some other community which is likely to be engaged and have already formed strong opinions. Then if the story gains traction and reaches the front page a more diverse and thoughtful group weighs in. Finally the story moves to EU or US and gets a whole new fresh take.

I’m not surprised that people who support something are the ones most tuned in to the discussion because for anyone opposed they also have their own unrelated thing they care about. So the supporters will be first since they’re the originators.