At least part of the issue is that much of this slop is 'good enough' for many people. As bad as many of those terrible recipe sites and video game walkthroughs and news articles might be, they're clearly good enough for the majority of the population, and enough so they don't see paying for content as worth the price.
The other part is that practically speaking, there's enough good free content in most fields that paying doesn't get you anything better. It's not surfaced well enough by the algorithms, but it does exist, and it makes it so in most areas, there's very little reason to pay for anything.
The other part is that practically speaking, there's enough good free content in most fields that paying doesn't get you anything better. It's not surfaced well enough by the algorithms, but it does exist, and it makes it so in most areas, there's very little reason to pay for anything.