I don't think it's homogeneous, but the sentiment "feels" different. (Scientific, I know.) For instance, there aren't people here who are saying, "It's good we'

I don't think it's homogeneous, but the sentiment "feels" different. (Scientific, I know.) For instance, there aren't people here who are saying, "It's good we're outing adulterers: they deserve it." I went back and looked at two of the largest HN posts on AM from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10083536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9914024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9914024 And yes, there are a lot of good comments. * In3d noticed the same thing then that I'm noticing now: "It looks like the reaction of most commenters is very different compared to when Gawker exposed the Conde Naste executive. This hack might have done this very same thing to many people." * ulrikrasmussen sees the sentiment: "I see a few comments sympathizing with the vigilantes behind this, implying that the exposed users had it coming." * nicholas_t makes the point about implications to Muslim users: "There are people who live in countries where adultery is punishable by death. Likewise for being gay. There's already one person from Saudi Arabia who expressed his concerns on Reddit but there's likely to be a lot of other people affected." * dsacco shared an anecdote: "I had an argument with my girlfriend about this. No matter what reasoning I used, no matter what I said, she could not agree that it was wrong that Ashley Madison (A.M.) was hacked. Her position was that marital infidelity is such a punishable offense that the participants on A.M. deserve to be publicly outed. In her view, it was not even up for debate. She felt so powerfully about infidelity that she didn't care." So yes, the general attitude is the same. You're right. There are just more assholes who said things like: "Zero sympathy. I have zero sympathy for both this site and for the users whose information was stolen. You all deserve it, for being selfish, amoral animals." (A comment that was rightfully downvoted to hell.)