Seems to me that creators are getting a dreadful deal from the current set up and that FB etc are the ones gaining massively.
Clough42 for example is a software engineer, and makes metalworking & 3D-printing videos that I enjoy watching; he certainly gets ad money (O(100ks) subscribers) but I'd guess he spends more on equipment, tools, etc. (and would despite the income) - certainly if you counted lost earnings from 'he could be doing contract work instead' - because that's not the point, it's a hobby, and a secondary hobby is putting it on YouTube for me (and millions of others) to enjoy.
(I'm sort of hesitant to single someone out - especially someone who's probably on HN, heh - but I that's the impression I get anyway. If it's not totally true for him I'm sure it is for others.)
As for quality, it's all opinion, I guess, but the only form that seems to have gotten better recently is prestige television, but even there I'd say it so far peaked around 2010. Film and pop music peaked in the 60s and 70s. Instrumental music, literature, and painting peaked centuries ago. Artists have created perfectly good art for as long as humans have existed without the need to track their consumers private behavior to develop targeted ad profiles.
> That was fine for centuries...
I always assumed that this was an artifact of recording technology: if you can record a movie or music, then you can have a handful of actors and musicians service the entire world, but without that each city needs its local musicians and theater troupes. If that's correct then we've been in this state for maybe 1 century.
For writers though it's been centuries, since writing enabled distribution of content in many places.
This is especially true if we want high quality content. So the dichotomy is only false if you assume people are willing to accept "stop consuming content" which, by and large, they aren't.