That's almost true. Elsevier once surprised me with a $100 Amazon gift card, which they said was in recognition for a particularly good job of peer review that year.
I'd laugh at the prospect of Elsevier rewarding me with "recognition" -- certainly something I would not put on my CV -- although I did take their money.
Another time, the American Mathematical Society (which is non-profit, and perfectly ethical) asked me to do a book review, and then gave me $150 in bookstore credit afterwards -- again by surprise.
My understanding is that book authors can make a reasonable amount in royalties (a few thousand, anyway). For journal papers, as you say I've never heard of any author getting a royalty.
This is not how I think about my job. Rather, the university pays me a salary, and expects me to engage in "scholarship" and "professional service" -- and I get to decide where I think I can make the biggest contributions.
This luxury is not available to everyone. Universities are hiring more and more non-tenure-track instructors, at lower rates of pay, with less job security, with higher teaching loads, and (usually) without any research expectations. In the future, we might be obliged to think about our jobs in more transactional terms.
But for now, I have the luxury of not having to think very much about questions like yours.
Probably the parent has experience in CS or similar where reviewers are never paid.
We get this idea from basic fairness within the rules of the larger system. Clearly, there are private companies that make money from publication of those papers. It follows that in a fair arrangement of some sort, they would have acquired the necessary rights from the original authors for some compensation or profit sharing agreement. That they don't actually do that is indication that arrangement is not fair.
[1] https://www.economist.com/china/2018/11/17/tsinghua-universi...
When I start thinking about what we lay public have been denied, in welfare, progress and life, just because scientists don't share the knowledge the lay public pays them to produce, the word hilarious isn't what's coming to mind.
Ironic for a scientist to rail on anecdotally and off topic about a problem they play the much larger role in deciding the fate of.
Knowledge of science among the general public let alone of how this sausage factory works is however unfortunate, not the key to fixing the problem.
There are a handful of different key roles and interests competing to influence the outcome. Researchers, universities, publishers, for profit businesses, etc.
It’s not that complicated. There’s the logistics, economics, and best guess modeling of any proposed changes.
Then separate from these technicalities people everyday are making value judgements and prioritizing principles against personal interests.
I’m not trying to advocate my opinion here in a comment of what these stakeholders should do. Only that these individual decisions, judgements, and will to act on them play a far greater role than public knowledge of who gets paid to review a paper.