A slightly orthogonal way to see this debate is that the standards that became dominant (tcp/ip, http, html, cookies, smtp, js, etc) became that way specifically because they were inferior in specific ways, such as privacy. This gave the opportunity to build varying levels of user exploitation into any desirable application without explicit consent or decision to pay for it. An Internet built on superior user-empowering technologies (there were and are plenty) would never have attracted the amount of investment that the exploitive web did. If the main metric that matters is growth, it doesn’t matter where it comes from; even highly exploitive use cases like spam and scams were some of the most aggressive accelerators of early usage.
Go to a convention. ask people about why we don't make software im a way that empowers users without a crippling dependence being created, or inflicting on users a leaky or otherwise insecire experience, and watch the room clam up.
