> Within myself I notice that the project becomes boring when there is nothing new left to be learned from it.
Yes, I have similar issue with motivation I have noticed, if I am presented with a problem to solve and I can see the solution before implementing anything, I am not really interested in coding the solution and testing it. I.e. the abstract or logical proof of the solution is sufficient for me (the fun part), but the actual coding, fixing some environmental problem and details of creating a working solution are (usually) much more boring - because they are almost always essentially the same.
It's a fairly safe prediction. Most large companies eventually make a strategic error (like missing a disruptive innovation) that eventually leaves them bankrupt, acquired, or just irrelevant. For hard data look at the Fortune 500 today versus 50 years ago. How many companies have maintained leadership versus how many are just gone? Sure there are always exceptions and Google and Facebook may beat the odds, but that would be a risky bet.
I am not saying there is nothing to this, but this is just a catchy concept with a convincing narrative. The sources are news articles and YouTube videos, not scientific papers specifically addressing the issues mentioned, for example showing a link between self-censorship and online monitoring or quantifying that effect.
The website does link to a lot of scientific studies actually. Both throughout the page and at the bottom.
But I purposefully didn't want to link directly to the PDF's of those studies too much. By pointing to accessible news articles about those studies in the "further reading" section I was hoping to keep things accessible to a wider audience.
Catchy concepts and convincing narratives sometimes precede more rigorous studies. As you yourself cautiously indicated, there might be something to this.
I can't satisfy anyone's need for a thorough scientific paper offhand, but I can certainly add anecdotal evidence : I regularly self censor online precisely because I know I'm being tracked in some fashion (and probably in ways I haven't even thought of : retroactive big data analysis 20 years from now is likely to be more sophisticated than it is today). I doubt I'm the only one.
Yes, I have similar issue with motivation I have noticed, if I am presented with a problem to solve and I can see the solution before implementing anything, I am not really interested in coding the solution and testing it. I.e. the abstract or logical proof of the solution is sufficient for me (the fun part), but the actual coding, fixing some environmental problem and details of creating a working solution are (usually) much more boring - because they are almost always essentially the same.