There is no mandate that YouTube must exist in its current state. YouTube serves two roles, one as a free service to host videos, one as a roulette machine that might pay out money if your "content" is favored by "the algorithm".
A huge amount of videos on YouTube are created for their own sake, with no expectation of going viral or making money off them. PeerTube fulfills the "free video host" role while also being ad-free. I might be naive, but I believe this is how most people saw YouTube around 2012.
The "seeking to make money on YouTube" role is artificially created as a result of a massive corporation running a loss-leader for a decade, dictating what content gets popular through recommendation algorithms, and literally paying people to encourage them to produce more of the desired addicting content.
Who knows what would have happened if YouTube had not been bought out and been allowed to compete fairly with P2P technologies as they emerged.
A huge amount of videos on YouTube are created for their own sake, with no expectation of going viral or making money off them. PeerTube fulfills the "free video host" role while also being ad-free. I might be naive, but I believe this is how most people saw YouTube around 2012.
The "seeking to make money on YouTube" role is artificially created as a result of a massive corporation running a loss-leader for a decade, dictating what content gets popular through recommendation algorithms, and literally paying people to encourage them to produce more of the desired addicting content.
Who knows what would have happened if YouTube had not been bought out and been allowed to compete fairly with P2P technologies as they emerged.