And I would argue that this very quickly becomes a race to the bottom, where the viewing of mass produced trash accelerates because "that's what people want to watch" becomes "we'll flood the market with cheap mass produced bullshit" which immediately becomes "people love watching bullshit and our stats say so!"

I also don't believe for a single second, based on their past records, that Sony, or LG, or whoever, are actually properly anonymising this data

“Reality TV” is a prime example of racing to the bottom of mass produced trash.

No,it leads to content which is attention grabbing, not better. They are not the same thing.

It also creates an echo chamber effect, X is popular so we make more X.

Our culture is already revolving around rehashing what's "proven". The most original and interesting ideas may come from those who oppose that trend, and these ideas are most likely to drown in the sea of slop.

Also the "content" "creators" who are most likely to benefit from tracking are the giant corporations - we're just making the rich richer.

Also somewhat related: https://rubenerd.com/stop-calling-people-content-creators/

Question about anonymous data is well, why not do it where the content originates? Sale of discs? Rental instances online. Number of times something was streamed... Why does it have to happen on end device, when it is entirely possible at source.

broadcast has no return path

Probably more importantly these days, neither do companies have access to data on their competitors. Your TV manufacturer will happily sell them some, though.

> content creators better cater to demand

That's actually the perfect description of why 'content creators' aren't called artists. They're not creative, they're regurgitative.

Society needs not faded, watered down, muted copies of originals. It needs more originals to inspire more creativity.

Originality is an art unto itself.

What you are right about, however, is the profit inherent in bland copies, which means there's a market out there consisting of dumb, easily satisfied cattle, to be milked by the lazily regurgitative bottom feeders that know only 'what's trending' and have said subscribe! more often than they've had hot meals. Those saviours of society.