Creators at all sizes rely very heavily on ad revenue! Most youtube channels cannot just turn monetization off and keep operating. Small channels will earn very little in the way of merch (if they’re big enough yet for merch at all), large channels have more expenses (like Linus Tech Tips who, last time their earnings were disclosed, still earned one THIRD of their revenue from adsense) such as studios and a production team.

I don’t see how most 'tubers are supposed to survive without the ad money at all, most could tank a bit of a dip as that has happened before, but turning it off is basically not feasible.

I, for one, enjoy the fruits of their hard work, whatever their genre of content is, and think they should be duely compensated.

I held off on adblock or so so soooo long because I wanted to support the people making the videos I like. But when that veritasium video about nitrogen fertiliser came out,and the 20 minute video had LITERALLY 20 AD BREAKS in it, I installed it immediately.

I do feel bad about denying the content creators the moeny they deserve, but if the site is gonna feed me that much crap per video it becomes unusable. That was my breaking point.

It’s because google has effectively unlimited resources and first-adopter advantage combined. The people who originally made youtube in 2005 would have never made money from it, even though the max upload quality was 240p (I remember when 480 on youtube was still considered high quality lol). But they got an audience which is what mattered. When google bought them, they still couldn’t make money, but they could prevent ANYONE else making money with a similar product but throwing enough money and creator-focused policy around to make any other platform look just plain stupid. Even today, how much do you think it costs to store and serve the hundreds of thousands of videos uploaded to YT a DAY? Many of them at 4K res or even 4K60hz??? It’s a massive undertaking and nobody can afford to build a competitor. And without youtube, the internet would be a much much smaller place.