Jonathan, you are describing much of what goes on on this platform. Navigating the platform is becoming content and as the platform pays, a natural demand for monetizing your content is created. Money changes everything.

On the balance of things, I would prefer to be paid than not for my writing but that is not my sole motivation for doing so. I suspect that most of the platform's highest earners are writing about the platform or making money online.

This dynamic speaks to the paucity of publications where you have any realistic chance of being read. People complain about bottlenecking in the largest publications but I have submitted content to some smaller publications and requested to be added as a writer on others and heard nothing in periods of up to four weeks. By this time, I just assume nobody's home and post elsewhere including the "writing communities" you cite.