It’s partially the fault of the consumer […] We want everything online to be free, so they have to revert to ads.
The responsibility does lie on the consumer. The biggest problem isn’t that advertisers exist, but that advertising is effective. It’s the same reason we’ll never end spam.
But that responsibility goes all the way down. Even premium users of free services with ads are part of the problem, because the platforms they use still set policy for advertiser friendliness.
It doesn’t matter very much that I voluntarily give Level1Techs money, because they still have to censor their content to avoid demonitization for free users. That will continue to be true so long as they use a primarily free platfom.
I have a love-hate relationship with Patreon, but they’ve already done a lot of good on that front. Hopefully, it’ll continue to grow (or be replaced by a better service that does the same thing) and we’ll see creators themselves shift away from “views” as their metric for success towards the conversion of free users to paying viewers.
The first ones to do it will be goddamned heros because they’ll establish the models that everyone else will follow once it’s proven.