And that's a great model. Ask for support, enough people offer it. Don't add paywall, the extra exposure will attract more people and statistically more payment

And that's a great model. Ask for support, enough people offer it. Don't add paywall, the extra exposure will attract more people and statistically more payments. The whole ad driven model only works for the 'growth at all costs', VC financed platforms. To buy into their narrative whole sale is just naive. It's arguably quite detrimental because it incentivizes a race to the bottom with dark patterns fostering addiction (the very subject of this whole discussion). There are entire networks of content producers making millions by creating purposefully stupid and misleading videos on TikTok and YouTube, infuriating people driving engagement.