None of the content I'm interested in is available elsewhere. I've checked for exactly this reason. I don't want to be freeloading off of google, ideally I'd not use their platform at all, just like how I replaced gmail with self hosting, googlemaps with openstreetmap, googlesearch with duckduckgo, etc.

It costs creators literally nothing to upload an mp4 file to a second website and it would create market forces where youtube now has to compete for views with those alternate platforms (even if it's fragmented). But they're not doing it. Okay, so then I need to use youtube, doesn't mean I need to give google my payment information to pay a fraction of that money onto creators and mainly further their adtech