For the case of social media sites, maybe this has to do with the culture at UK universities. Perhaps only in the US do you find people who notice other people

For the case of social media sites, maybe this has to do with the culture at UK universities. Perhaps only in the US do you find people who notice other people socializing with computers and then deciding to exploit, scale and monetize it. Did UK students socialize with computers? You bet they did- lots of UK students on USENET/irc back in the day. So where were the greedy businessmen who would exploit that?