For years privacy-minded people have complained about the lack of recognition of privacy issues among the masses. Suddenly, story after story about aspects of Facebook's anti-privacy practices are being read by the public. This will lead to more stories about other data mining entities as well.
The more this keeps up, the more concrete privacy issues will be in the minds of many.
And yet, HN is full of dismissals. I've decided that to many here, the idea of being in an "elite", informed group is more important than the actual issues.
Given that you are not the target audience of these stories, are you really in a position to judge whether they have reached "dead horse" status?
>the idea of being in an "elite", informed group is more important than the actual issues.
Do you mean to say it's voyeurism, i.e. the draw of being "informed"? Sitting in the eye of the panopticon?
I think people just have a tendency to focus on the positive things that might be gained from data mining. There's just a lot of naivete about how compromised an ad-supported business ultimately is.
Only if the subgroup "people who are tired of all this privacy stuff" is representative of HN's readership. There are more people reading than will ever comment. That's true of any community.
I find it funny how we complain so often of the news moving too fast and major stories becoming irrelevant in a day or two, yet when a something stays in the news for more than a week people gripe over how much attention we give the topic.
many posts on HN about facebook are not even from within the last few months. some of them are from several years ago, but are only being reposted now for sweet internet points and bandwagoning.
> many posts on HN about facebook are not even from within the last few months. some of them are from several years ago
HN is just for "breaking news." It has an established culture of re-posting "old" stories if they're interesting or informative in the context of more recent events.
The situation regarding Facebook and privacy is very much unresolved. How can you call it a dead horse? Facebook is very much a large, living, dangerous horse. I think we shouldn't let up until the horse changes its spots or dies.
The more this keeps up, the more concrete privacy issues will be in the minds of many.
And yet, HN is full of dismissals. I've decided that to many here, the idea of being in an "elite", informed group is more important than the actual issues.
Given that you are not the target audience of these stories, are you really in a position to judge whether they have reached "dead horse" status?