When YouTube started you could at least make the argument that uploading video was difficult, because in order for people to watch you had to convert it to VP6 and play it within Flash, but today everything supports MPEG4.
Monetizing video outside of YouTube also isn’t difficult. Sponsors are easy to get if you have high quality content. If you have trash content then yeah, it is hard to monetize. Which lets be real here—that’s what we are talking about.
People think they have a right to a free audience and a (cost free) revenue stream for uploading garbage content that is just marginally better than literally nothing at all. People seem to believe they have a right to an income for creating what is really just spam in video form. Honestly, I wish YouTube would just terminate the revenue sharing option entirely for non-partners. Let someone else deal with the garbage content and its associated drama.
As far as I'm aware, I can't upload videos to CNN. I'm certainly aware that other sources of video exist; I don't even use YouTube much myself.
I'm actually sympathetic to your overall argument especially when complaints focus on the difficulty of monetizing video outside of YouTube. But it's at least worth discussing what it means when a private company has outsized control over certain types of information sharing.