I'm not sure why anyone contributes hours of their time to this sort of "incentive" program. The power lies entirely with the platform. They can pay or not pay

I'm not sure why anyone contributes hours of their time to this sort of "incentive" program. The power lies entirely with the platform. They can pay or not pay on a whim. They can choose to explain their decision or not. There's no real recourse other than writing a blog post about it. In fact, I'm not sure why anyone wastes time writing content at all for a business that uses that content to serve ads—at least not without a legally binding contract with clearly described payment obligations.