https://blog.saleslayer.com/selling-on-tiktok#influencers They tell businesses to partner with tiktok influencers for direct advertising, so that some people are actually able to turn internet points into money (by analogy: maybe there is a point for businesses to partner with any one on this list:
https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders ?) Also a lot of stuff on youtube contains some form of direct advertising as part of the video.