Exploiting people: making them feel that they have no choice under the threat of poverty if they don’t comply, often resulting in accepting less than favorable pay/them paying more to get something they need.
Monetizing people: “We already play video games for fun, so why don’t we turn it into a thing where we get paid to play video games by streaming it and possibly doing ads or accepting audience donations?”
Basically, exploitation is taking advantage of people’s possible desperation. Monetization is just taking something people might want and changing/making money off of it.
Monetization can lead to exploitation, but they are not intrinsically the same at its base.
I mean, yeah, that’s how I deal with it.
But even some non-church-going folks with drop off their kids at “youth group” essentially for free childcare and debatable “moral development.”