I wonder about that, after looking at HNs level of response to privacy issues. First, if you look at the number of topics covering privacy issues on this site

I wonder about that, after looking at HNs level of response to privacy issues. First, if you look at the number of topics covering privacy issues on this site it completely dwarfs news about people getting killed in Ukraine, for example. But we can argue that's related to the interest of its readers, but then isn't exactly what the OP is complaining about, that the readers on HN seem more concerned about privacy than war and policy brutality? Another aspect is the level of concern on such an article. If all we saw in reply to this kind of articles would be rational, healthy discussion about these issues at a level of emotional response that corresponds to how important these things are in the grand scheme of things that would be fine, because it makes easy to believe that the same persons would be much more worried about more serious issues. But unfortunately a lot of replies on this kind of privacy topics are so strong that I can only draw 2 conclusions: either those people don't care about more important issues and this seems like some of the most important problems they are facing in their life (that's what the OP is saying) _or_, maybe they do care about more important issues too but the response to those is likely going to be so strong that they would be completely irrational about it, which I guess is also possible, but sad.