> youtube is already rich enough

maybe, hard to say. but the people who make videos, and get 55% of the revenue (give or take a bit), frequently are not (unless you insist on watching mega channels only).

Well it should be a hobby to be a youtuber not a job. Monetizing it destroyed the whole platform.

While I think there is certainly a lot of questionable content because of monetization, some of my favorite YT channels exist because of it.

For example, there's a guy who rebuilt a early-1900's sailing boat from scratch, funded almost entirely by revenue from his channel. The videos are crazy high quality hand-construction porn and would never exist without the monetization aspect. Oh, and I had no prior and no current interest in boat building.

Most of the channels I follow (via RSS, rather than YT itself) are like this, and YT generally does an excellent job at putting new channels in front of me from time to time that marry my interests (even one's I didn't know I had) with phenomenally great story telling via video.

I know that it creates opportunities for people. The question is, could that guy have done it without the monetization part? Certainly, would've just taken a lot longer...

He would have given up the project. It was a full time thing for him, not a side project.

For me the only youtubers still worth watching also have patreons. I prefer paying them there. Dave from EEVBlog is one of them.

But people like linus tech tips, marcus brownlee etc, they have really gone over the edge of commercialisation. I don't bother watching them anymore.

Exactly. All those screaming clickbaity headlines etc. Even serious youtubers have this now. And all the horrible sponsor fragments. It's just no longer usable without sanitation plugins.

They screw us too though. For premium viewers they already get more money, but you still have to put up with their sponsor stuff. They could put clean videos on their patreon or something but almost nobody bothers

Why pay for clothes? Nordstrom's is already rich enough, just walk in and take something.

If you take a youtube video, they don't have one less of course.

Because they provide a great service that delivers more value than the subscription is worth.

The people provide the value, the platform just happens to have a monopoly standing in that domain...