This is a situation where the traditional economic focus on distinct "supply" and "demand" functions and processes is limiting, and a cybernetics/systems approach strikes me as more useful.

Or, to put this back into economic terms for a moment, the issue is supply, as the demand function you've described is induced demand, by way of the Jevons paradox: the information and capabilities would not exist if the costs of data collection, aggregation, processing, and utilisation were higher.

Since they are not higher, the data environment exists, and the demand is induced.

Back at uni in one of my econ courses, the instructor who'd returned to teaching from administration for one final term before retirement, made the following observation about computer systems planning from his experience. Roughly:

Every time a new computer system (think enterprise / academic database applications, 1980s era) is designed, you can go through the most careful capacity planning and modeling procdess, but once you actually deploy the system, you find that there are a whole set of new uses which emerge because people wanted to do them previously but were unable to. And as a consequence, the usage levels are higher than anticipated.

It was a throwaway comment in class one day, but is among the handful of most memorable moments from my college education.

The point is that if it's not possible to do a thing then it isn't done. If it is possible, and cost-effective, then there's virtually no way (absent draconian regulation fo some form: legal, social, moral, political) to prevent it from occurring.

And once a process is possible, if it provides some benefit, then it's not possible to not do it when competing with those who do because you simply cannot operate competitively.

Which is where we are now with data, and surveillance capitalism / surveillance state.

From the systems view, what you have is a positive feedback loop, where increased efficiency => decreased costs => increase capability => increased benfit => further research => increased efficiency.

There are further elements to this.

As to the competitive market element, once production or provisioning of goods and services moves beyond strictly local markets, then the actor who can claim a larger share of the market has an advantage to doing so. Being able to do that requires mass production (or provisioning) capabilities, which themselves are a feedback loop (increased capital utilisation, improved processes, greater market share, greater market brand awareness, familiarity with concepts, UI/UX, tools, support and supplychain dynamics, etc.) which further increase benefit.

(And that's excluding unfair business practices, though those also provide considerable advantage.)

An immediate consequence is that the battle for mindshare becomes increasingly fierce, and with that a reliance on advertising -- simply having a good local name, foot traffic, and a shingle on a busy high street isn't enough.

Hamilton Holt's 1909 monograph Commercialism and Journalism describes the impacts of this change over the previous half-century on the publishing trade, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It comes at what we now consider to be the beginning of the mass media age, but does an excellent job of laying out the dynamics of what's occurred since:

https://www.worldcat.org/title/commercialism-and-journalism/...

As to the emplyees vs. users dynamic, the error here is that employees are not ultimately the control agents. Managers and investors are, and they seek, increasingly, short-term direct profit with little concern to either overall social welfare or long-term impacts. So that's a very red herring and misleading analysis.