You can pay for it now? The narrative in this thread seems to be that people are being forced to use Gmail against their will, and paid options don’t exist, both of which are obviously false.

While strictly speaking you aren't forced to use Gmail, the reason i gave up trying to run my own VPS and mail server was all the little issues that caused people with Gmail to not ever receive (or receive, but in their spam folder) mail sent by me.

You're in minority. People are buying into the narrative at large scale.

If that was true how come people are making living creating stuff with Patron supporters?

Not everyone has to do it, but there is enough of people to keep creativity free from influance ad companies.

I have a few people donating money to me on Patreon so I'm not arguing against that. I'm just saying that the majority does not actually want to pay for things, but that doesn't mean people can't make a living out of the minority that does. That's not the topic of this conversation though (see the line you replied to).

Do you have a source for that? I'd be interested in reading the studies.