In the olden days, those people wrote for things we called ‘magazines’. Without infinite free content at people’s fingertips, actually paying for curated content will likely make a comeback.

If it's really that good, you'll pay for it with the money you saved in advertising. You're paying for the ads, don't forget. Plenty of people used to pay for things like woodworking classes, back when there was money. Doing a woodworking class in person at a woodworking shop will teach you much better than youtube.

Nothing would be lost, it would just be somewhere else. Meta and Google monopolized content and ads.

We had the usenet, irc, ftp and small hobbiest websites long before those companies existed. It actually helps if you can remember 1996 or maybe 1998.