That’s not V4V. Follow the money. V4V is a direct artist-to-audience relationship with value being exchanged directly both ways. Alternatively, the ad-supported model works something like this: Advertisers pay X to show their ads to some defined demographic. X designs its platform and algos to engage users and keep them online so they can show them more ads. Creators/artists are a key element in this, because they’re the ones generating the content that other users are engaging with, thus keeping them on the platform and generating sales/etc for the advertisers. X then pays creators a split of ad revenue based on how many impressions, aka how much of your attention, a particular creator garners. The issue is that X has to appease advertisers so they keep spending money placing ads. Artists are simply a piece of that mechanism, and X will deplatform and censor anyone at will as needed to that end. As a result, artists are not free to say and create what they want, out of fear they will lose their revenue and perhaps their livelihood.

V4V is you and me creating and saying what we want, and directly tipping and supporting those who create and say what we value.