If you try and attack a company, that leads to monetary damages, then yes, that company is entitled to use their data for redress. When you open HackerNews, or any website, of course they have all your information in log files about what you opened, when and from where (ip address, browser headers, etc). That should not be surprising.
The lesson is, if you do something Twitter doesn't like, they'll scoop up your data and use it to sue you.