The saying goes if you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Now, you’re both. Every big social media app is testing subscriptions. It's a business model that comes with a perverse incentive. Just like airlines, if you make life worse, more people will pay.
No way. Spinning rust isn’t getting any cheaper these days and these companies are expected to not only serve all their existing content, but allow for free uploading and storing in perpetuity. Google is a great example of one of these massive companies trying desperately to reduce the amount they have to store. They recently ended the free Google photos backups and they are more aggressive with deleting inactive YouTube accounts.