The vast majority of users on every forum in Internet history, from Usenet to slashdot to Twitter and beyond, have always been lurkers: people who almost exclusively read. They are essential to the vitality of the forums but they are invisible, proverbial dark matter. They do not deserve to be treated as less than. But I don’t exactly want to stop X from shooting themselves in the foot for the umteenth time.
That's a great point. I guess the key thing to determine is if a person is even reading content, or lurking so to speak.
I don't like this stuff. I suppose you can anonymize this data easily, but it inevitably requires a degree of spying on users. I know tracking usage like this wouldn't be anywhere near the top of the list in terms of creepy egregious stuff these platforms do, but I don't like the idea of it. Everything has become so invasive.
