The other major factor is the collection of data regarding damage numbers gives players a measuring stick to gauge their improvement and efficiency.
Of course, I never agreed to be part of that process. Fortunately I was able to opt out of fflogs, but what if they didn't provide that feature? Oh well, sucks to be me I guess? Shouldn't have started playing FFXIV if I didn't want to be recorded by third party software and have it posted on third party websites? Are there any other parsers or websites I need to check? Does anyone even know what all is out there?

They can access the records of other people on the same job and compare situations and performances.
Maybe I should post a public resume and all my job performance evaluations to help make my chosen industry better? Or maybe someone in the industry should do it for me without my knowledge or consent! If I don't like it, I can just opt out I guess, right?

Self improvement questions that focus on comparison, like "What buffs were up for the player?" "What actions did they do differently?" or "Was their order of actions different?"

These lead to "Why did the person at 90th percentile do things this way?" and "Can I replicate this same result in my own static?" This isn't limited to raw damage either. This can and is used for healing usage and mitigation cooldowns as well. Did this team get away with eating the tankbuster with only shelltron and rampart? What healing was used after? Et cetera.
But I don't want to be involved in your self-improvement process, ostracized for opting out of it, or ostracized for some arbitrary number. Unfortunately the way parsing is done has put me at risk for being damned no matter what I do. It's an unofficial pre-judgement system whether its meant to be or not, and I feel pretty strongly that's exactly what it was meant to be.