It is my opinion that internet giants are destroying creativity on the internet. Creativity has to be paid for, whether it is journalism or artists.
As a publisher of the medical technologies news website (since 2004), I can tell you that what we have now is monopolized internet. Few entities, like Google and FB, took over the internet and crafted the landscape to their advantage. They monopolized ads revenue, search traffic, and they are actively spying on the general public, taking away any possible advantages from publishers and creators. So website for doctors cannot make money by advertising to doctors. Doctors will see Google ads on Candy Crush game. The result is a dearth of advertising money for creators. Google and FB own the biggest slice of internet money...
In the olden days we had websites and blog networks being born, Gawker, Weblogs Inc, TechCrunch network, political networks, etc etc. And what do we have now? Central stations with fake news shenanigans and retarded memes. While publishers, including your local newspaper and your favorite websites, are struggling. And your privacy is being exploited.
I think you are putting the blame on the wrong entity here. It isn't google or facebook who are to blame, it's the large news and media companies.
Google or facebook doesn't care which creators get paid. They actually want a variety of creators to get paid. The large news and media companies care greatly.
Vox, huffingtonpost, etc are media that are fairly new and they thrived in an open environment. But they are struggling because large established news and media companies have pressured google and facebook into giving them preferential treatment. So traffic that may have gone to vox, huffingtonpost, etc in the past is now being redirected to the nytimes or cnn.
You may have a medical technologies site, but if google or facebook has to favor large news sites over smaller specialized sites like yours, then you simply won't be getting much traffic.
Look at youtube. It's now mostly CNN, SNL, John Oliver, Will Smith, etc recommendations. Look at google news. Go look at reddit and any other social media platform. What used to be a user driven platforms are now traffic drivers for large media companies.
This is why it's so strange to see smaller players supporting the established media in attacking social media. What do you think will be the outcome? Social media is going to serve large media corporations.
Facebook nor google cares whether your medical site or the nytimes gets the view. They are middle man taking a slice of the ad revenue. They used to be pretty fair and showed the most relevant results. If your article had more traction than the nytimes article, your link would rank higher than the nytimes. Now, it's almost certain that the large established media companies will get the first billing.
As a publisher of the medical technologies news website (since 2004), I can tell you that what we have now is monopolized internet. Few entities, like Google and FB, took over the internet and crafted the landscape to their advantage. They monopolized ads revenue, search traffic, and they are actively spying on the general public, taking away any possible advantages from publishers and creators. So website for doctors cannot make money by advertising to doctors. Doctors will see Google ads on Candy Crush game. The result is a dearth of advertising money for creators. Google and FB own the biggest slice of internet money...
In the olden days we had websites and blog networks being born, Gawker, Weblogs Inc, TechCrunch network, political networks, etc etc. And what do we have now? Central stations with fake news shenanigans and retarded memes. While publishers, including your local newspaper and your favorite websites, are struggling. And your privacy is being exploited.