In a past column, I talked about how the fat cats of social media profit from all of the value that normal folks like you and I provide. Social media sites have complete control over the attention-creating value that we provide for them, and give us little to no say over how that content is managed. They can even take away access to our profiles. All the money generated by our work ends up in their coffers.
I mentioned Substack as a place with low take rates, and how content producers there are able to benefit much more directly from the value that they create because they use a common protocol—email—that is not controlled by any corporate entity.