Take the animated bar charts that where sort of a trend for a while on Twitter and Reddit, they got popular for a reason; they are interesting to look at. These types of charts, if done well, make you curious what will happen and how it will end.
With data visualization, and actually all design, you always have to consider your goals and audience.
Let me give some examples of animation used in data visualization that really contributes to the story:
https://drones.pitchinteractive.com/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/29/opinion/clima...
I think it's hard to argue these are "entertainment", they all tell important stories using data and animation. In these examples animation adds to the story, making it more engaging, and drawing more attention to the issue than it otherwise would have gotten. It can evoke surprise, shock, emotion that could not be achieved otherwise.
It's a bit like: people often use text in very bad ways. To mislead, too much or too little information, large quantities that say nothing at all, unreadable styles, lack of structure etc etc. Does that mean text is bad and you stop writing text? Of course not.
I personally hate pie charts and animated charts. For some leaders/meetings in some companies too many people want entertainment with a smidgen of info.
