No, content creators gave the internet to advertisers because they needed something to eat.
Look at all the people editing wikipedia, answering questions on SO and various forums, and even making videos without any real expectation of payback.
Seems like the web would be just fine without the professional “content creator” class.
(I actually feel like “content creator” is dehumanizing pejorative now.)
For example: I'm currently learning DaVinci Resolve. There's a lot of great videos, and they're all free. I expect a lot of these people got as good as they are working on at least a few advertising contracts, or on media that will run with ads interspersed.
Most editing of Wikipedia is done for personal reasons, including commercial (you get paid to write on Wikipedia) and with SO its most likely because information is cheap.
In fact the points you raise is so trivial that we've had bots do it for us way before chatgpt.
Compare this to artists, programmers and designers who only release things for free under strict circumstances (hobby, social gain, licensing requirements, etc.).
Not really. Suppose you go onto a platform like YouTube, where most people are not being paid and some are (through advertising). How would you choose to consume only the content of those not being paid? There's no way to do that except to avoid YouTube and all similar platforms entirely which is not a reasonable option for most people.