I don't think its a good argument to say "because x is profitable they should not do y". Sure I can dream of a world where actors do not try to extract profit where possible but its not realstic.

Whats the alternative?

State funded services. By now it's clear that platforms like YouTube and Twitter are integral parts of our lives, even used by institutions to release official statements and by media to publish news.

Why then should we leave such important services in the hands of a handful of investors who's only interest is increasing the profit margins?

I've used state run websites. They generally do not work. Incentives matter, if you want good products you need to incentivize making them.

Some countries/cities manage to have excellent public transportation infrastructure. Why shouldn't they be able to build an excellent public digital infrastructure?

> Incentives matter, if you want good products you need to incentivize making them.

Speaking about incentives, for-profit products have the worst ones. Would you rather use a twitter-like product built by people earning the more time you spend on it, or by people who keep their jobs if they manage to achieve a positive societal effect?

No, I don't think incentives are the issue here.

One issue is probably the slowness of public institutions in embracing change, which is also a good thing in some cases, but doesn't help when the goal is to build new tech products that enable societal change. It seems that private initiative works best when it's about inventing stuff, but not when it's time to implement it in a society. Although that could be changed, if governments weren't so hellbent on delegating so much to private initiative.

> Am I the only one that is a little turned off by how everything nice on Earth needs to be monetized to death?

Do you have an idea about how much does it cost to run a website like YouTube?

Yes, and those costs are covered already. We're talking about squeezing additional profits out of the product in order to make the shareholders happier.

How is Google already paying for YouTube?

I presume you like to get paid to do your job. I'm a bit miffed at that.

I'm a bit miffed at you thinking additional profits would go to employees, rather than in the pockets of a handful of shareholders.