Techdirt has launched a ten-part series examining how Big Tech moved from building and expanding the open internet to increasingly shaping it around its own metrics, incentives, and assumptions. The opening installment frames this as a shift from mission to measurement: platforms now design around what they can quantify rather than what users actually need.
The series argues that this reliance on metrics creates an "illusion of knowing us." Platforms treat internal numbers as a true picture of user behavior and desires, but those numbers are built on the platforms' own priorities and constraints. The result, according to the series, is an internet that serves the metrics rather than the people behind them.
Since this is a single introductory essay, the source offers no competing viewpoints. It also does not discuss specific legislation or court rulings. Still, for law and policy readers, the critique is relevant: it questions the reliability of the data that platforms often use to justify decisions about content moderation, privacy, and market power.