> "They're still entitled to consume content for free."

YouTube et al. are free. That's the whole point! The only reason anyone uses them is because they are free, as in free beer. If I crack open an incognito tab and go to YouTube, they serve me a page of videos, I click on one, and it starts playing. I didn't agree to anything, I never said "oh, but I agree I'll watch the ads/let the ads play/download the ads" in order to be allowed to watch the YouTube video. (armchair lawyers will make murmurs about "Terms of Service" and "End User License Agreements", which may in some cases technically be true in a legalese sense, but are clear cases of trying to weasel out of what's right in front of our faces, which is that these platforms are free).

YouTubes business model is to give things away for free and HOPE that they can advertise to you enough that it will be worth it. This is, in general, the business model of "the internet". The thing is, we've been at it for so long, that the businesses folks are starting to become entitled. It's been 25+ years and so many people have gotten in on this game (low level content creators are quite numerous) that now the opinion of the tastemakers is shifting to one of "yeah I am entitled to get paid for my work, and since I get paid when people look at the ads I facilitate, I am thusly entitled to have my audience look at my ads so I can get paid." It's a train of thought that seems to make sense, but all the creators are forgetting that that's not how their business model actually works, and that's not the deal any of us in any conscious way have agreed to.

I have a story I wrote a while ago that I feel captures what we're seeing with business people becoming entitled to owning our eyeballs, devices, and attention:

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By 2027 we live in a world were in every town there's a pizza place with a huge sign atop reading "FREE PIZZA". You park your car and queue in line for the order window; when your time comes you ask for a pepperoni pizza and you're handed a pepperoni pizza, no cash required. However, you're also handed a 3 inch thick stack of flyers advertising for random business and schemes. Well, you didn't ask for a phone books worth of paper, so you move to throw them into the garbage. Before you can you're stopped by an employee who gasps "what are you doing?!"

As though in answer to a question like 'why are you breathing', you reply "I'm throwing away these extra papers; they're very heavy."

"But don't you know that if people throw away the advertisements, we can't afford to give away the pizza?" moans the employee.

Feeling irritated, you respond "Well, it's my pizza now so I'm going to throw these away." You do, and with that you walk to your car and drive home.

The frustrated employee would, by 2030, move to management, where the business would seek to have customers sign papers saying that they can be hand-fed pizza by restaurant staff as long as that customer agrees, under penalty of death and enforced by on-site police, to sit with their eyes held open and stare into monitors showing advertisements on loop. Later in 2035, this nameless employee would receive a promotion to VP after coordinating a team of lawyers who successfully lobbied the US congress to legislate allowing the term "FREE PIZZA" to describe the process of "contractually and punitively enforced assisted hand-feeding in panoptic advertising environments".

Meanwhile in 2028, Europe would rule in favor of selling Pizza for $2 a slice.