Start from the idea that small business owners aren't actually idiots and don't spend their time promoting their business on social media because it's fun.

Cost of customer acquisition isn't comparable without those platforms. Working harder and still not being price-competitive isn't preferable, even if it mitigates some future risk.

This suggestion is interesting in that you seem earnest but you appear to be fundamentally misunderstanding how the internet works:

Ppl use google to search for things, they use chrome to find things, they don’t like typing in addresses, they would much rather google give them the top result whatever that may be.

You are suggesting that the news orgs change human behavior. Good luck with that.

What digital platform is open and neutral? Everything is either controlled by Google, Facebook or Apple, and optimised for engagement and their ability to earn revenue.

Imagine if a company controlled not just the main street in your town, but also in every town in the world. The analogue would be to tell shopkeepers to build their own city and convince people to live their so they can run their shop.

If you don’t use Google to drive traffic and your competitor does, you lose. It doesn’t matter that your competitor gets screwed over by Google a few years down the road. You will already be gone.

This is part of why capitalism is said to have boom/bust cycles. Stable equilibriums are less favourable than unstable ones. Taking advantage of every available opportunity is the only way to compete.