19th century's sharecroppers have become 21st share-contenters. Some places (metafilter, reddit gold) have pushed share-contenters into paying to give up their own work to the digital plantation owners. And of course don't forget the 21th century cracker ... the mods. Amazing.
There's truth in that, but I don't think it's quite the same for most other people that create things. Also, this is clearly aimed at people who are starting out and dealing with a common experience: the promise of exposure in exchange for work, which is essentially saying, "maybe you will get recognition for this, or maybe not." Writing is particularly vulnerable as it's very easy for someone else to reproduce the work and put it up on their site to generate clicks. When you add that to the fact that writers are not paid very well to begin with, I think that this guy is right to shine the light on it as no one can be counted on to stand up for writers except for other writers and perhaps a few that read their words.