# ChatGPT 2186 Hacker News commenters recommended ChatGPT and 2885 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 1 years (164 owners). **Verdict:** A general-purpose chatbot that people use to research faster, understand health issues, learn topics and draft writing, though it often hallucinates and tells you what you want to hear. ## Why people recommend it - Helps understand health problems (6 comments): "Rubber-ducking your symptoms for free for as long as you need and then asking a doctor for their 2-minute opinion is IMHO the best way to go about healthcare in 2026." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46538244)) "It's definitely faster than searching everything on my own, but whether the information is reliable still depends on personal judgment or asking a real doctor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45830959)) "I fed all the data I got into ChatGPT deep research and it came back with an NIH study that said 25% of people in a study had localized allergic reactions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46542135)) - Faster than searching yourself (4 comments): "It's very good at quickly searching and surfacing relevant information online, and that's helpful, but if I did not have a lot of experience at linux administration" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48398552)) "It's definitely faster than searching everything on my own, but whether the information is reliable still depends on personal judgment or asking a real doctor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45830959)) "There is a surprisingly high chance chatbot can just give the exact answer back to me, usually with extra interesting reading materials as a plus." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744095)) - Fills knowledge gaps, teaches (3 comments): "ChatGPT was surprisingly helpful. If you put in the work to truly understand the where the gaps are in your mental model, it can do an amazing job filling in the gaps." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49505120)) "LLMs are great at surfacing the unknown unknowns, and I think can help people better prepare for the rare 5 minutes they get to speak to an actual doctor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45832487)) "Its also a teaching machine. There are several classes I had in college I would have killed for ChatGPT to cut through the terrible instruction." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378063)) - Useful for editing and rewriting (2 comments): "I’ve asked ChatGPT to rewrite an email for me "so that I come across as a reasonable human being rather than a deranged psychopath". It works." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46674315)) "identifying grammatical mistakes, contradictory statements, ambiguous sentences, and tone mismatch for a given character has been very helpful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45847338)) ## What people warn about - Hallucinates and makes things up (5 comments): "it's usefull, but does spew a lot of bullshit, especially when your request seem to imply you want something to be true, it will happily lie to positively answer you." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46215713)) "for basic questions it's serviceable (though the number of responses that cite just Youtube videos means my skepticism for its output validity remains)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49321789)) "My treating doctor (EU country) asked ChatGPT for a recommendation for my case, as she didn't have much experience with my particular condition. Guess what? The recommendation was wrong" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47388583)) - Struggles with complex, precise tasks (4 comments): "I fully agree with the assessment it was "reasonably well". It is not, however, something equivalent to the product of a disciplined TDD practitioner." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47153979)) "I asked an earlier iteration of ChatGPT to build a probability model based on the FIFA tournament pools / brackets and current bookkeepers' odds. It made a complete mess of things" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50134135)) "You're probably not using OpenAI models for complex or non-standard tasks. It shits the best just as often as Qwen when you need precision and detail in a non-obvious problem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49723265)) - Sycophantic, agrees too readily (3 comments): "To OpenAI's credit, when they realized ChatGPT 4o was overly sycophantic they did roll it back pretty quickly, but I'm pretty sure the speed with which they've been moving they've glossed over a lot of issues." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46449162)) "it's usefull, but does spew a lot of bullshit, especially when your request seem to imply you want something to be true, it will happily lie to positively answer you." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46215713)) "In thinking mode it would have said "wow this guy's EQ is like negative 20" before saying saying "you're absolute right! what if you ignored that entirely!"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46447712)) - Ads and business direction worries (4 comments): "I pay for and use their product, it works for my use cases, but watching the business deals and weird quotes from a far makes me less confidant." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47144966)) "if they don't have access to chats but they find out the enchilada ad was performing the best, something like this can provide enough information to be used to know about peoples private chats" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949855)) "ChatGPT is trying to become the new Amazon. They are trying to vet stores that can check out through ChatGPT officially, and so you're just trading one master for another." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49704938)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Claude](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude.md): 5175 recommend - [Google Gemini](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gemini.md): 2195 recommend - [Grok](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grok.md): 727 recommend - [Microsoft Copilot](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-copilot.md): 139 recommend - [Claude Desktop](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-desktop.md): 104 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://chatgpt.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "ChatGPT", https://hackerapproved.com/p/chatgpt/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).