> Most of this content is only there to solicit an ad impression, not enough people would pay money for it.
Exactly. There’s no issue.
> There's a reason you don't see a Patreon or other way of paying for the vast majority of clickbait content.
The vast majority of content, clickbait or not doesn’t have a patreon to begin with. Most patreon have social media presence which includes ads. Sounds like the worst of both worlds.
The content is clearly not valuable enough for people to pay for it, and in fact it's called "clickbait" for a reason because people clearly feel cheated by what they got as opposed to what they were led to believe they were clicking on.
In a market where consumers of the content pay for it, this wouldn't fly. In a market corrupted by advertising, this flies and the by-product is wasted time, computing resources, pricing out good content from the market (as you can't compete with free) and the risks associated with advertising (the ads aren't properly reviewed, scams, spam and malware can and does fall through the cracks) and data collection.
This also subverts the entire market and is the reason you can't even buy a good TV or appliance anymore without going for niche, commercial-grade products. Do you want to live in a society where you literally can't buy a TV that doesn't spy on you or show ads?
Advertising in its current form is absolutely out of control and ends up being a tax that we all pay for both in time (whether watching the ads or playing cat & mouse with countermeasures such as AdBlock, Pi-Hole, etc) as well as money (as it's ultimately part of the price of the goods we all buy).
The fact that nobody wants to pay their hard-earned dollars for it suggests it's more than just his opinion.
In fact, let's imagine a system where one side provides ads that you can watch to accumulate a monetary balance and the other provides content (including the aforementioned trash).
Do you think people will still watch and choose to pay for said trash content? Or will they choose to spend that money on better content, or even cash it out and buy a meal or drink?
Exactly. There’s no issue.
> There's a reason you don't see a Patreon or other way of paying for the vast majority of clickbait content.
The vast majority of content, clickbait or not doesn’t have a patreon to begin with. Most patreon have social media presence which includes ads. Sounds like the worst of both worlds.