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?