I agree not only with regards to Edward Snowden but generally worthless articles about people who happen to be in the tech news lately. E.g. "Kim Dotcom braids his hair!", "Julian Assange orders Cherry Coke instead of regular!", "Elon Musk buys three rare white leopards!" It's tedious.

Unfortunately what makes good click bait also makes good upvote bait and most people will just fall for it unthinkingly. And looking at the comments so far, apparently will defend doing so.

Yes there are larger issues at stake which are why these people are in the news, but 99% of the stories being upvoted have nothing to do with the larger issue and are instead press releases with no interesting content, meant solely to drive clicks and in the case of older stories like Kim Dotcom, meant to keep their names in the news.

Stop being a sucker; be more critically minded with what you choose to upvote and read.