a few months ago, in a matrix server far far away, somebody told me that they pay for youtube premium instead of using an adblock to support creators.
when i asked why they're not donating directly, they worried about how to distribute money based on watch time by themselves; it would be too much work. i responded with something similar to this:
"you just need to support one person with the same amount of money you'd spend on youtube premium subscription. if everyone does that all creators will get paid fairly, because patrons will choose different targets and it'll average out."
this was a novel idea for my correspondent, so i catalogued it in my brain with the flimsy name "average theory".
i had an occasion to recall it recently, with similar "aha" moment on the other side. i still feel like it was a fluke twice, but maybe it's not as obvious as it may seem, so here's the psa for everyone.
obviously it's a very rough idea; you won't get the same results because of human biases when taking explicit choice route. i'd say it is actually better this way because low effort content is not indexed disproportionately.
one thing i'll clarify is that you can have other reasons for choosing the subscription model (which i probably don't agree with but are more defensible). just don't use that one.