Or maybe, just maybe, a lot of the things going on in the tech industry could have ramifications due to severe privacy violations along with a large amount of startups/companies selling bullshit to consumers.
The tech industry is just another industry filled with plenty of dishonest, selfish, sociopathic people and organizations that inculcate groupthink, diffuse responsibility, and achieve a collective level of amoral selfishness beyond that of any of the individuals involved in it. This is true, and this is also not news to anyone in the tech industry.
But this is the human condition. Every organization is prone to these kinds of things. And to some extent, every organization has to be self-interested and prone to value their own interests over those of anyone else.
Which isn't a statement of defeatism--it's worthwhile to curb this tendency, and to identify particularly bad instances of it. It's just that the media themselves are also subject to the human condition, and that despite pretending to be disinterested public servants, they have incentives of their own. And those incentives are only stronger and stronger due to the sheer desperation that the news industry finds itself in.
There's an old saying that you should never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel. The tech industry didn't just pick a fight with one of these men, it threatened the livelihood of all of them at once. So maybe, just maybe, we should price that in a little bit whenever we see yet another hit piece directed at the tech industry.
