Absent such groups, it would seem to be desirable to let individuals monetize work which makes them happy. In such a web, it would be more akin to a street marketplace, as opposed to, say, a curated set of goods.
So the matter we must take up is that of equal opportunity for those wishing to increase their readership, (whether for influence or monetary reasons)?
That's my interpretation. In this sense, are Google and many other "given" sites on the web a barrier to having a conversation about such measures, because of their power?
Google would seem to want this a more open web. I suspect they're starting to fear everyone using Facebook for everything, thus investing in Wordpress. Though they haven't been big supporters of their own blogging platform.
A lot of the social media Giants like you to keep your content on their own site, basically the longer your on Facebook/twitter the more ads they can show you. Google drops ads all over the web (except Facebook and twitter) so they don't care where you go.
The problem its hard when not social media to get visibility.
Its easy to start a blog (wordpress/blogger/tumblr etc.. ), its harder to get people to go to it and periodically check it out. RSS aggregators/ google reader was a good way to do this, but they've fallen out of favor. There is a ghost town of abandoned blogs on the internet presumably because they didn't get the reads/ interaction.
Its almost like you need to announce your new blogpost on twitter/ fb..
But I think there are solutions.
I saw this open source groupware on hn a while back and am starting to get in installed for an art non-profit. There are probably others, but I'm going install and see how it goes:
https://www.agorakit.org/en/