You may want to lead with that next time - I'm not the only one attempting to interpret your vagueness in-context (that is, in the specific case as presented here) which apparently isn't your intent. Hopefully it'll generate productive discussion instead of a confused chorus attempting to clarify terminology.

> I feel there's a panicked "deer in the headlights" attitude that comes with talking about data and metadata

Are you seeing that in this thread? Or is this more of a generalized feeling of HN? Or of the internet?

I feel like I'm mostly seeing discussions about what specific data was involved, what alternatives are out there, and the severity and history of the problem (which I'm seeing as mostly "not as severe as your initial kneejerk to the title might imply, but not ideal either" - pretty levelheaded and accurate, IMO?)

None of them seemed particularly frozen, unable to move forwards, or panicking beyond the time it took them to evaluate what specific (meta)data was leaking - to me, at least. And given that password databases secure the keys to the castle, so to speak, I'm not sure a little panicking isn't warranted in this specific context.

> I regularly forget about how closed-minded the HN userbase is when it comes to privacy.

If that's in response to this thread, keep in mind that, in-context, the "privacy" many professionals in here are concerned about, is the "privacy" of their amazon account keys, to avoid their servers being subverted into part of a malware distribution botnet. And the "privacy" of their user database - to avoid the reputation hit that comes when all your customer's passwords are cracked, and their inboxes are flooded with porn spam. I think it'd be a mistake to overgeneralize that response.