I was seeing info that it is pretty easy to pull in $120k a year from ad revenue from Google and Facebook's ad platforms leveraging fake news. So you have the engineers still in their innocence bubbles unknowingly coding their biases and inexperience into these platforms for 6 figure salaries, and people on the outside also collecting 6 figures taking advantage of the platforms. Barrier to entry to either of these two sides is pretty low for certain demographics.

How's the journalism side doing? Let's see, you've got that necessary schooling to build up some student debt. Then you have the likelihood of entering the workforce at maybe $30k a year. Put in some hard work, maybe advance to an editor after several years, and one likely still won't break six figures. Higher barrier to entry and an industry in big trouble because no one want's to pay for anything these days. Thus driving the demand for more and more ad supported products and creating platforms for people to make 6 figures from these ad networks...