I think there's a significant shift from empowering users to controlling users.
Users have become an instrument, rather than ends in themselves. You're attempting corral them so they do something you want instead of empowering them and offering them tools they may need to do what they want to do.
The very notion of power users is deeply incompatible with this.
Yep, while the focus in the past was to appeal to power users (because they would bring in the regular users through word of mouth and recommendations), now that most users are already captive to a variety of platforms, the focus switched to dark patterns and deceptive practices to deepen the lock-in and increase switching costs.
Now power users are merely an inconvenience, since they usually advocate against dark patterns and prefer purely functional software.
I'm not sure how to really combat this. It might be too late.
Users have become an instrument, rather than ends in themselves. You're attempting corral them so they do something you want instead of empowering them and offering them tools they may need to do what they want to do.
The very notion of power users is deeply incompatible with this.