[Dylan16807]

> The fact that there is no such thing is strong evidence that they've already hit the economical sweet spot.

It would only be evidence for that if there were multiple strong competitors to youtube that use similar methods. The dearth of competition suggests that other forces are the cause.

[convalescindrey]

There are competitors, but they also use ads.

Consumers just don't want to pay for things they've gotten used to getting for free. You may not like it (I don't), but that's reality. Being angry at "big tech" for this is relieving the general population of their responsibility.

[Dylan16807]

What competitors do you have in mind there? Do any of them get even 5% as much traffic? 1%?

Vimeo wants hosting fees for significant use, there's a few decentralized platforms without ads, nebula charges and doesn't have ads. Dailymotion fits the mold but this ranking site says they get 0.4% as many visits and each visit is 1/4 as long.

I'm not saying that things should all be free, I'm saying that youtube's "economical sweet spot" is one that is basically competition-free and because of that we can't learn much about what other viable forms the market could take.