Different people learn new things differently. Folks without a background in RE, who are playing with these tools, may also not care about privacy until they find a reason to. I don’t see anything wrong with folks taking a roundabout way of finding out how things work; Be it software or privacy.
I think the issue is mostly over-sensationalizing findings.
For example, it would be tiresome to have someone insist that s0ss is clearly an illegal hacker with multiple felonies to his name solely because he chats with YCombinator's secret anonymous hacking collective. And yet this post right here makes it very clear you are one of us! ;-)