"Make no mistake, the Internet has never been free."

Honestly, this sounds like a Mozilla press release. The spin is absurd

Before ISPs existed, someone else paid. Universities, governments, selected corporations, etc.

After ISPs (post-UUNet), internet subscribers have always had to pay

Who finances the data collection, i.e., the transfer of data from/about subscribers to the so-called "tech" company for commercial exploitation. Hint: It is not the so-called "tech" companies

When I first accessed the internet, and later the www, the term "creators" was never used to describe people who used it

Methinks "creators" is SillyCon Valley speak for "unpaid independent contractors". Why not use the term "producers"

The gigantic websites comprised of other peoples' work, today's so-called "platforms", are not "creators", they produce nothing. Despite billions of dollars at their disposal, and vast amounts of published material, their production costs are small. This is because production costs are outsourced to unpaid independent contractors. The material the "platforms" publish does not belong to them, they are only third party intermediaries (middlemen)

In the original internet, people publishing on the internet via websites produced the website content themselves

Today, "platforms" are not creating anything except a baited trap for people using the internet, whether they are "creators" (producers) or consumers, where internet users can be spied on for advertising purposes. And the targets of this surveillance and subsequent targeted advertising will even pay for sending the surveillance data collected to the interlopers

Today's "creators" may be paid (if they are lucky, like winning a lottery) or not (the other 99%, their free contributions serve as bait). But "make no mistake", it is not the third party intermediary "platforms" that pay "creators", it is advertisers, but only after the "platforms" (middlemen) take a cut

SillyCon Valley calls this an "ecosystem". But today's internet, cf. the original one, IMHO looks more like a toxic waste dump