I’d argue it really started when Edward Snowden was on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic. HN was wall-to-wall with updates and rumors that, frankly, were not particularly interesting, informative or thought-provoking. But the ideological valence of the story was clearly more important.

We got a mini version of this more recently in the Net Neutrality wars.

It’s funny how both of those stories turned out in the long run.