Yea I've been kinda watching youtube through this whole social media moment, suspicious that they've successfully taken a middle road here that will probably last. Ads and profiteering? You bet ... but it seems that there's a monetisation model for "creators" that kinda works (though I'm not sure at all about that). And so, for anyone that actually wants to make any sort of living doing the creative stuff that the rest of us lurkers want to consume, the inevitable question of how do you live within capitalism seems to have an answer of some sort in youtube while all the other platforms perhaps don't have healthy or appealing answers.

As for the fediverse, I think there's a massive opportunity for donations and crowd funding to become a much more central and normal aspect here so that making some sort of living by contributing to and being a part of this space is actually viable. Even some sort of subscription model for platfroms that are essentially non-profit creator-driven would make a lot of sense here.

That's a problem that goes beyond any single platform though, and at the moment, cross-platform or fediverse-wide work seems to be lacking behind a little bit.