You’re totally right. No arguments here. Sadly I don’t see anything like that happen anytime soon. The money is where stupid is.

I left YouTube shortly after they introduced monetization. Before it was bonkers and full of funny or interesting or just stupid content that people did out of joy or even with a glance of hope for a tiny “fame”. Then it slowly went dogshit when everything became optimized for ad-revenue and even thumbnailing became a precision-science. There’s still vimeo and the others, but mostly I just don’t consume video anymore. Maybe occasionally a game-review on YouTube, sorted by views and scrolled down a ton to find those with nearly no views. Not for their opinion but to see the game in action.