I disagree that your reasoning is entirely sound. It's a bit of an elitist point of view I suppose; but fundamentally I don't think all customers are created equally in terms of importance. One could even in this day and age call some of the more important ones "influencer" or something similar.
While the general customer base might not be served by this feature, what if a subset of the customer base enjoys this feature to an extraordinary extent? Maybe it fixes a lot of problems they have with the service; and negates a lot of complaints they otherwise would have posted.
Would it still not be the correct choice to "clutter the UI" with this?
I don't think it's as easy of a choice like you're trying to make it.
But I could also be jaded by the fact that Spotify for years has trying to pull me into listening to all kinds of odd European folk music that I have no interest in what-so-ever.
For a long time we called this sort of user a "power user". People who are not necessarily technical but who love your application and use it extensively will appreciate power user functionality.
It's probably fine to not have anything to appeal to power users, but those power users probably will be the sorts to be influencers to talk up your application to everyone they know.
Because the masses are now large enough that you don't need to have an actually useful application. You just need to make it kind-of work and for it to become popular.
While the general customer base might not be served by this feature, what if a subset of the customer base enjoys this feature to an extraordinary extent? Maybe it fixes a lot of problems they have with the service; and negates a lot of complaints they otherwise would have posted.
Would it still not be the correct choice to "clutter the UI" with this?
I don't think it's as easy of a choice like you're trying to make it.
But I could also be jaded by the fact that Spotify for years has trying to pull me into listening to all kinds of odd European folk music that I have no interest in what-so-ever.