It's a reflection on how software developers can inadvertently distance themselves from the ones who care the most about their software most, their customers.
The terminology and historical use of the word 'user' doesn't give enough weight to the fact that their 'users' are actually customers. Referring to their customers properly shows more respect for their customers while setting the expectations from their developers when building services.
Forums have admins, moderators, posters, subscribers, lurkers.
Torrents have seeders, leechers.
None of these are customers.
Sure, Amazon has customers mostly, and some advertisers.
I would say it's not a reflection of distance of software developers, but more an attempt by developers to create a new all-encompassing term which describes all of these things. People, organizations, machines. More than one per real life unit.
The terminology and historical use of the word 'user' doesn't give enough weight to the fact that their 'users' are actually customers. Referring to their customers properly shows more respect for their customers while setting the expectations from their developers when building services.