No. We need to think in other ways than the ad economy. I’d gladly pay for good content if there was a decent system set up for it.

I find the best content is free content, made from passion rather than monetary need.

But there’s not and the end result is the same.

Youtube paid works. People pay, get no ads. Kagi so far seems to be doing well for search too. One model may not work for all content types but to say that there is no alternative is straight up not true.

I'm not sure Youtube doing fine while local news sources go under and such a is a positive.

What local news sources are going under? As far as I've seen not many actually are. I'm paying my local newspaper, it seems to be doing just fine.