It's a very ambitious new feature that they are piloting for now, but I expect this to become the norm when Bitcoin finally hits mass adoption. Also:
I run my sites on free hosting (Blogger). I would like to more effectively monetize them and I am working on that, but I write for reasons other than money.
It may kill the projects that are intended to be easy money. I suspect a lot of those are sort of low value anyway. If that suspicion is fairly accurate, it won't remove much of value from the system.
Also, Patreon is working for some "little guys." (shrug)