From the article: PewDiePie, a YouTube star who had signed deals with Disney and Google and then was discovered to have made anti-Semitic statements.
...100% bullshit smear campaign by the WSJ not mentioned...
Influencers must create trust and manage their own base, just like any other brand. The losers at the end of that stick are ad driven media outlets like NyTimes and Google. People creating content is not going anywhere and neither is the power of social media. Sure some top end influences are practically just product pushing robots, but this landscape will even out to be more genuine and niche based.
The long ugly decline of traditional media grasping at straws is not over, the revenue will continue to plummet. The title should be "The continual fall of the MSM as the internet continues to erode it's value."