&gt; Sharecropping is a better metaphor.<p>Yes. This is the metaphor I use for describing building applications within a walled garden (like iOS): You don&#x27;t have users, Apple has users, you have a portion of Apple&#x27;s &quot;real estate&quot; that you can monetize while turning over 30%, and if Apple thinks somebody else can do a better job of monetizing that real estate (including themselves), then (effectively) out you go.<p>This is exactly what the publishers are doing: They are creating content for Facebook&#x27;s users, not for their own users. They are not building an audience that happens to use Facebook to connect to their content, it&#x27;s that Facebook has an audience that happens to read the publisher&#x27;s content.<p>It&#x27;s Facebook&#x27;s land, and the publishers till Facebook&#x27;s fields at Facebook&#x27;s pleasure.<p>&gt; In 10 years, I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if most publishers were dead, replaced by Facebook directly paying creators.<p>This works for YouTube. If you can generate millions of views, you can get a share of the advertising revenue.