> Would we be okay if they charged a $3 “moderation fee” on every upload to cover the cost of paying someone to watch the video and evaluate how it fits YouTube’s rules? The big creators wouldn’t care, but the small time videos would immediately stop being uploaded and competitor websites would become popular overnight.

That would actually be pretty ideal - most consumers watch YouTube for the bigger channels and popular content anyway, so they would stay on the platform, which would validate that revenue model. The smaller producers and consumers would both leave, which would help build competitors to YouTube. The big producers who remain will be slightly disincentivized to spam low-quality videos (including those text-to-speech automated ones that some people here have found). And, Google will have no excuse for not using humans to moderate videos anymore (can't cite "cost concerns" when you're literally pricing it in).

Seems like a win-win-win to me.