I think the funny (and somewhat scary) thing about ad-supported platforms is that both the creators of the platform and the customers implicitly agree that the content just isn't that valuable. They know that if they paywalled the platform and forced people to make that value judgement then barely anyone would pay.

Which is kind of scary where you realise people spend hours and hours each day watching youtube slop, tiktok, instagram reels, while also subconsciously feeling "this content is worthless and I wouldn't pay $10 a month to keep watching it".