I think the core of the issue is automated curation. There are several different ways to curate a collection. It isn't feasible to have someone curate things for you and you don't have time to do it yourself. Facebook/Twitter/etc has opted for majority curation: for the majority to define what is relevant to the rest of the users.

There needs to be a revolution in curation of content. Music suffers the same fate until we find a solution.

Programming is a creative act and requires substantial creative mental force. Anytime we are creative, we are putting ourselves out there and making ourselves vulnerable. This naturally causes us to be defensive. The ego connotation misses the root of the problem. We are defensive only because of our insecurities in our identities, not the identity itself. The code we write is an expression of our identity. I find it similar to an artist that paints a portrait and immediately gets critiqued.

Being able to take this criticism without feeling that it is an attack on your expression of yourself is a skill that is learned. I think it only comes from one or both of two things: 1) realizing that you are expressing yourself and that some may find it useful and others won't and be okay with that or 2) be in an environment that doesn't immediately judge your production. I find the latter scenario to be the building block for the former.

In any creative venture, there needs to be an environment of acceptance of failure. If people are comfortable with failing, then they will succeed.

There is some psychology to this. A person's instinct is to fear and, as if a predator were stalking them, fear of being watched. In the digital age, that means fear of how their data is being used/watched. That isn't to say they are doing anything wrong, per se, but the act of being watched instills fear. Thus, even though they don't read the article, they respond instinctively with skepticism.

The reality of how this data is used is probably not as dire as is feared. Even though fear is a useful tool, it should be used to push us to investigate (e.g. read the paper). Fear should inform some objective discussion.

In this case, I think that the fear is relevant due to how companies have notoriously failed in preserving anonymity. I think in order for us to usefully data mine people's lives and actions (which is what we're talking about), we need to come up with better ways of ensuring that the data can't be used for draconian purposes by those in power (whether state, media or other). We need some way to assuage the fear to get the benefits of the data. After all, this isn't a technology problem. It's a people problem.