Comment by mghackerlady

They aren't doing all that research to make their product better for you, they're doing it to make their product better for them. Those metrics help them design to keep you on [platform] for as long as possible, consuming as much [product] from [company] as possible. It benefits them to be easy to do the things they want (buy something or view ads) and hard to do things they don't want you to do (leave, change settings, generally take any kind of control)