I don't think people do actually consume it. In my experience this content was purely for SEO or maybe just a headline that people read quickly to keep up-to-date. The actual article content is rarely seen by a human.
You're missing the whole middle part about users and revenue. SEO alone does not a Wall Street valuation make.
Maybe the indictment here should instead be about discovery and how we share ideas and utility with one another.
Are they? Or are you over-estimating that part?
Do you have an example of a company whose valuation is driven principally by eyeballs? Not metrics tied to eyeballs, e.g. ad revenue. Just eyeballs.
Do you have an example where the metric is eyeballs?
This was a thing once! But to my knowledge, it isn't the sole basis of any company's valuation today.
So people will see content ESPN is actually paying meaningful amounts of money to create ie videos.
If you are faster and have the best SEO at that point in time then that means everyone trying to read about Lebron James retiring is going to search it in Google and is going to read your article first, and you're getting the ad revenue. It's a 90/10 situation. The "top" website in the rankings is going to get 90% of the clicks.
You can only be the "top" if your SEO to that point is also the "best". And to have that you need to have all this generated content.