YouTube, now a Google subsidiary, offers perhaps the starkest example of the change. Once entirely ad-free, by the mid-2010s many of its videos required users to watch a fifteen or thirty-second commercial to see a few minutes of content, making television's terms look almost respectful by comparison. That priceless impression of getting great stuff for free, the attention merchant's most essential magic trick, was losing its charm. As with any bit of legerdemain, once the actual workings are revealed, the strings made visible, it becomes ugly and obvious, drained of its power to enchant.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 1087