I do agree that decentralized data will not prevent big data. Big data starts always on a small scale and is also done by soe Steemians.
The interest in different types of posts varies with time. I’m sure that soe browse trough the trending and hot topics to extract information about what type of posts are trending or hot and write their next articles based on this research. While this is harmless it is the same idea as behind big data! We have Steemians who do post the top most profitable post, alsoan example of data mining.
While it is true that most companies do use this to enrich themselves, I do admirer the technical solutions and algorithms.
I do think that this is an evolution which can’t be stopped and will brings us good and will harm us.
The goods things will be for instance medical related, the bad things concerns privacy, manipulation and for instance the automated system to fire automatic atomic rockets!
I, myself, don’t have a problem with it, as long as I do know what happens with my data.
For once the governments are doing something about it, looks at all the European law suits against google and facebook!