Originally a metric to drive prioritization and constraints on the project (amongst others, like zero deps, etc) -- but clearly ended up getting abused
Call me unempathetic, but how would this be any different in a non-digital era? You’ll still have a market (albeit significantly smaller, IE: lets say a small locale or village). But you could have easily said the same thing in a non-digital age, with just more rudimentary metrics and a market that is a community that either values or doesn’t value your work. Much like the proverbial school playground (which could also be analogous to a market).
It’s like the author is blaming technology for illustrating the truth in a highly efficient way.
She may as well have complained about the printing press being problematic.