This is 100% correct. The only thing I can add is that the profit seeking and consolidation is now hurting the remaining enclaves of weird fun on the Internet. For instance, many of niche subcultures that once thrived on Geocities still thrive on Tumblr, but the leadership of Tumblr is not happy about this fact.

When Marissa Mayer was in control of Yahoo (which included Tumblr) she used to brag about how she was using a "data driven" approach to maximize the revenue from Yahoo. This seems to have been abysmal for the actual users. Engagement on Tumblr stagnated, then declined. The great business guru Peter Drucker has pointed out that entrepreneurs often ruin their own products because they are uncomfortable with the type of success they end up with. Marissa Mayer would be an example of this. She had one of the great gems of the Internet, but she was uncomfortable with how weird it was. And it is difficult for leadership to really lead when the leadership is uncomfortable with the product they have.

I tried to capture how destructive her rhetoric about "data driven decision making" can be when I wrote the essay "When companies make a fetish of being data driven they reward a passive aggressive style":

"I’m especially curious because Google is famous for basing its decisions on “data”. I have no idea how things work in Google, but I can say that every company I’ve worked at that supposedly valued “data” in meetings actually valued something darker. The use of “data” in meetings tends to be a passive aggressive negotiating tactic for a group of people who for cultural or emotional reasons don’t think it is reasonable to express strong disagreement or actual anger. Instead of expressing strong emotion, people are taught to quote data — they then cherry pick whatever statistics back up their beliefs."

As far as I know, there has never been a company that said “We want the worst informed people to make the decisions” so in a sense all companies have always valued data. But they didn’t make a fetish out of it. They simply expected people to be well informed, and to make intelligent arguments, based on what they know. That would have been true at General Motors in 1950. That much has probably been true at most companies for centuries. When management says that the company is going to be “data driven” they are implicitly asking for a particular type of interaction to happen in meetings, an elaborate dance where people hide their emotions and quote statistics.

Trust your instincts. Over the years, we often condense many years of learning to a few simple rules. If you asked me from what peer-reviewed study I learned to value minimalist design, I would not be able to answer you — it comes from dozens of books, hundreds of articles, thousands of conversations, and countless observations, and if the accumulated wisdom of my years of experience is of no value to you, then why did you hire me?

Obviously I am not advocating that meetings should be abusive. No one should be allowed to talk over another person, as that would be disrespectful, but when one has a chance to speak, often the most effective kind of communication is one where people show how strongly they feel about an issue. If you are an experienced professional, then presumably you’ve been hired because the company wants to know the lessons you’ve learned over the years. If your instincts tell you that a given policy will be a disaster, don’t let anyone silence you with their demands for “data.” Speak the truth that you know."

http://www.smashcompany.com/business/when-companies-make-a-f...