How is a chat forum a business strategy at ALL?

Wait, right, the whole data harvesting thing. I was already hyperbanned back then but I remember seeing posts in like /r/teenagers, /r/askreddit, I don't know fucking, /r/memes, that were all like "post the most popular childhood toy when you were growing up", "list the 5 cities you have visited the most", "what's the best thing about the city you live in" et c, just obvious attempts at eliciting personal information. Nobody thought anything of it and proceeded to give them tons of info.

Thank you, I now need to go yell at a particularly annoying cloud in my backyard.