Better advertisements, yes, but also things like adjusting search placement based on adopting Google’s ad network (AMP) or using their content to promote unrelated applications. AMP, Google+, Facebook pages & especially the infamous pivot to video were all exercises in pushing the media industry to promote things which were important to the ad companies but not their users.

The other common trend here was offering competitive pricing until they had enough market share to force less generous terms. We joke about even prestige journalism writing like Buzzfeed but that was responding to the incentives set by ad-tech companies.

Again, I’m not saying Google or Facebook should get nothing - only that we should recognize that paying journalists is expensive and they were successful for several decades at getting a great deal of profit from that work without compensation. If you don’t want to live in a world awash with quasi-spam, clickbait, and propaganda we need to figure out a better balance where people can make a decent income doing quality journalism.