people keep saying things like this but really it's a question of what's available

music piracy is basically over thanks to spotify, apple music, youtube, bandcamp, etc

hardly anyone i know torrents movies anymore due to netflix, hbo, hulu

everyone has a phone plan instead of hopping around on free wifi constantly

people pay for lyft/uber instead of just skipping fare on the train

there exist social networks and communities that are effectively fee-supported. somethingawful and metafilter are some siloed examples, but there's the fediverse and stuff like mastodon where essentially people either join a specific community/clique that's funded by members or host their own instance.

i'm convinced what keeps most people on the main advertiser-controlled networks is they are run by huge corporations with service monopolies and network effect. remember, whatsapp got big on a dollar per year subscription