I think we see it a bit differently. When the grocery store chain sells information about the buying habits of its customers, it is the customers doing the buying, but it was the collection and monitoring systems that "created" the information.

Twitter has "users" but those users are not the "customers". Twitter created a watering hole so that it could interest nearby predators in access to where the herbivores would be on hot days.

To be counter-pedantic (is that a word?) If there were anywhere else for Emojitracker to get their data, then I would agree with you that Twitter did not create it.

I think that watering hole analogy is the the best explanation of the online ad industry that I've heard in quite a while.