By the way, YouTube already does this.

More aggressively, Facebook could produce tools for monetizing publishers’ and artists’ content in a similar way to how it offers development, growth, and monetization tools for app makers through its acquisition Parse. If Facebook lent a hand with monetizing the traffic it sends publishers in more ways than just letting them serve its ads, they might feel more comfortable relying on Facebook as a distribution channel. Imagine a paywall designed to show you which friends have subscribed and the great content they’re consuming that you’d get access to if you paid.

And if Facebook really wanted to go hard at patronship, it could build out a full-fledged competitor to Patreon that might also step on the turf of new creator platforms like Vessel. Perhaps Facebook would let Pages offer paid subscriptions for exclusive or early access to content delivered straight through the social network. Rather than having to track down content from their favorite creators, patrons could let content they’ve funded flow right to them in the feed.

Allowing Facebook to host your videos, photos, or articles wouldn’t sound so scary if it was bridging you to payments from your biggest fans.

Facebook is on a quest to absorb the Internet. Between its new mobile payments system, rapidly-scaling video infrastructure, and Instant Articles, Facebook’s built a shiny set of new pipes to do just that. Working to pay those who pump the content could make sure those pipes stay full.