Comment by Arch485
11 hours ago
Exactly - purely "data driven" decisions are how we end up with ads really close to (or overlapping with) some button you want to press, because the data says that increase click-through rate! But it's actually a user-hostile feature that everyone hates.
The reason that feature gets implemented is not because the devs think users will like it ... they know users don't want it, but it drives revenue and pays salaries.
But collecting data and looking for insights doesn't mean you mechanically optimize features, especially user-hostile ones? This is just as, if not more, likely to happen when basing your decisions on what people say they want over what they actually do.
If we were perfectly rational, then yeah, more data should never lead to worse decisions. However, it's easy to fall into the trap where being data-driven makes you only work on those things that you know how to measure.