This is how many "tech" companies that sell advertising services promote their websites. Like a lottery. They do not have to pay out to every person who submits user-generated content,1 but if they pay out to a small number they can use those examples, "winners", to draw others in.
Ideally the "tech" company only wants a limited number of "viral" pages so as to maximise the reach of advertising via those pages. Even if there are 10,000 pages serving white noise, the "tech" company may actively funnel visitors to only a small number, creating ideal conditions for maximum advertising reach.2 (And probably excluding many interesting pages as a result.3) As alluded to in the parent comment, most pages will get too little traffic to generate significant advertising reach and will not pay out "$18K a month".
1. As with lotteries, there are odds. But unlike lotteries, there is no requirement to publish them. Moreover, the "lottery" here is non-transparent. Traffic could be manipulated by the "tech" company behind-the-scenes and the public would never know the details.
2. Of course, the company can claim it does not actively manipulate traffic, e.g., through search and/or "recommendations", but rather computers do, through "algorithms", "AI", "magic" or whatever euphemism they choose for the decision-making and computer programming that their employees perform.
3. Anecdote: Some of the best YouTube and SoundCloud pages I have found, by accessing these websites without using a popular web browser, have very low view numbers. Friends are often intrigued with how I found them. It appears others are getting funneled to the viral crap.
Popular browsers: Safari, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Brave, and so on.
Generally, browsers that automatically navigate to addresses, e.g., via redirects, and/or make HTTP requests not specified by the user, e.g., by automatically executing others' Javascripts.
This is how many "tech" companies that sell advertising services promote their websites. Like a lottery. They do not have to pay out to every person who submits user-generated content,1 but if they pay out to a small number they can use those examples, "winners", to draw others in.
Ideally the "tech" company only wants a limited number of "viral" pages so as to maximise the reach of advertising via those pages. Even if there are 10,000 pages serving white noise, the "tech" company may actively funnel visitors to only a small number, creating ideal conditions for maximum advertising reach.2 (And probably excluding many interesting pages as a result.3) As alluded to in the parent comment, most pages will get too little traffic to generate significant advertising reach and will not pay out "$18K a month".
1. As with lotteries, there are odds. But unlike lotteries, there is no requirement to publish them. Moreover, the "lottery" here is non-transparent. Traffic could be manipulated by the "tech" company behind-the-scenes and the public would never know the details.
2. Of course, the company can claim it does not actively manipulate traffic, e.g., through search and/or "recommendations", but rather computers do, through "algorithms", "AI", "magic" or whatever euphemism they choose for the decision-making and computer programming that their employees perform.
3. Anecdote: Some of the best YouTube and SoundCloud pages I have found, by accessing these websites without using a popular web browser, have very low view numbers. Friends are often intrigued with how I found them. It appears others are getting funneled to the viral crap.