I think that an open systems that are universal and interoperable are inherently superior to any walled garden. If people think that the fediverse can’t handle or incorporate large corporate interests then this is a failed experiment and they should just shut it down now. Superior open systems should be able to dominate a free market environments, and people either don’t believe this to be the case, or the fediverse is inferior and will never beat the centralized competitors.
I also hate Facebook but for those reasons I think that Facebook joining the fediverse would actually improve Facebook, not worsen the fediverse.
What do you mean by direct-to-content-producer? I can't find it on Google. Are you suggesting the viewers pay the content creator and the content creator pays YouTube for hosting?
Subscription is a reasonable funding method. It's also reasonably priced. I think the bigger problem is companies that refuse to offer subscriptions, because Facebook knows no one is dumb enough to pay $15-20 a month, but that is what they make off the ads so offering the service for anything less would cause them to lose money. Merely offering the subscription shows users how much Facebook really makes off of them.
YouTube is also very generous with how much they spit revenue with creators. I don't like that they exist as a monopoly, but at least they aren't parasites like the other half of the web.