Many people are now talking about the "death of the ad-supported internet model," and I can only say that it can't come quickly enough.
The main reason why it all switched to ad-supported is the massive costs of storing and streaming all that high-definition video. And for what? So I can see every pore on Joe Rogan's face while he sits in front of the mic and talks for 3 hours?
Or so that some video game dweeb can read his essay about why an obscure JRPG is the height of postmodern art over 30 minutes of game footage. Or all the channels trying to imitate Kurzgesagt with shitty animation and information they gathered from browsing Wikipedia.
Face it. Most of this video is unnecessary. 99.9% of all possible information can be relayed through text, pictures, and the occasional sound file.
Furthermore, most video content creators are unnecessary too. I can just read about a laptop's specs and the reviewer's experience with it. I don't need LinusTechTips to stare at me with his reptilian eyes while he destroys the inferior product with an oversized novelty mallet.
Most of what's on YouTube and other video-heavy social sites is not insightful, not creative, not informative, not fun, not sexy, and honestly shouldn't exist at all.
My current company makes mobile games. We're supported entirely by ads, because even our IAPs are indirectly dependent.
Most of the Appstore and Play Store are like this btw, so those will go too.
And that would be amazing! All of our games are crap, all of the freeware is crap, it's all garbage drowning out the 3-4 good, open source apps in each category. These are entire businesses and industries that don't need to exist, don't solve real problems, and one app at a time make the internet worse.
Oh tell me about it. I work in the content marketing industry. The whole field shouldn't exist, and I hope ChatGPT just kills it. We made search engines crap with all our SEO and we churn out useless semi-plagiarized content.