You know what, that could be the solution to fix the internet.
Years ago before ads, the only people that published stuff were the ones who were legitimately interested. They were publishing out of love, not greed.
Today, all kinds of low quality content is published because they want ad-revenue. It makes it very hard to find the high quality content.
I say don't pay any of the creators. Then the only creators left will be the ones not doing it for money.
And without a profit motive, people will begin the true work of their lives and dreams! (Except that they still need to survive.) What is ethical about paying a plumber but not an artist?
That's lovely in theory, but the reality is that it just means the majority of the creators left will be the ones being paid directly because their content is primarily promotional, and some of the better creators will turn their hand to something else [or something more explicitly promotional or hard to find because it's behind a paywall] because everyone has to eat.
And what was left wouldn't be easier to find, because there wouldn't be a free platform to find them on.
I spend almost 30€ per month via Tipeee (an equivalent of Patreon in France). Creators whose work I value are getting more from me than from the ads that would otherwise track, profile, and brainwash me. Also, many content creators are getting paid more from partnership and product placement than from the shitty ads that YouTube and advertisers allow them to place on their videos except when they decide not to because well, that 20 minutes original content video is using a 1.5 seconds excerpt of some random movie which is the "intellectual property" of Big Corp for a joke, for example.
Doesn't really matter much, YouTube's payment scheme is too unreliable anyway (constantly changing rules, entire channels being demonetized because of one video, no actual support when unjustly demonetized or when someone copyright claims your video etc.). Most creators already ignore YouTube and base their funding on sites like Patreon.
