Unfortunate that you found it disappointing and it wasn't my intent for the title to imply data. It was intended to describe my experience. I can see how you were primed to think otherwise.
This is very much a rant. Hope you find your numbers elsewhere :)
I visited the article after the title was edited, so I knew what to expect. And it far exceeded my expectations. I hate the palpable feeling that as a software engineer I’m part of an industry that is becoming harmful to society. And we are the ones doing or at least putting up with the excellent examples in the article.
How many "independent" voices you see depends on your bubble. How many users are there of these platforms? What fraction wrote a rant? Not saying those opinions are wrong, but it's not particularly insightful.
See, a company that is user orientated would be appalled by such resonance regardless of numbers and would try to alleviate concerns. Microsoft doesn't do any of that. Their escalating behavior cannot really be explained away.
Sure, maybe there is a happy island somewhere with enthusiastic users, but working in the industry, I doubt that very much. Also, many of their forums about their frameworks have developed into ghost towns. So if you now that happy isle, I would gladly like to see it.
This is very much a rant. Hope you find your numbers elsewhere :)