Here is my take: content creators are the problem. When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept! Then people noticed you can monetize their content.…
Nothing bad with creating fun stuff for profit. And over the last decade youtube creators has been providing content with quality way superior compared to what more traditional entertainment industry has been producing (mainly marvel junk food, low effort remakes and SNL)
I think that's an oversimplification of the issue. OPs main point (as I read it) was that once a profit motive became dominant, it pushed out enthusiast/passion-motivated content creators, and as a result the output is distorted towards that which is profitable.