[Draiken]

Because they're a monopoly. Finding creators without using YouTube is very hard, at least for me. It's hard even inside YT.

But most creators are exclusively on YT because that's the only choice that matters.

There is Nebula now that does have some nice content, but they're orders of magnitude smaller (plus their UX is very rough) so it's hard to even call them a competitor.

That's why monopolies - capitalism's inevitable end goal - destroy everything they touch. In order to argue "you can choose to not do X" requires the choice part to be true. Sure, we can argue people can completely forego X. But that's basically a nuclear option that even if they wanted to do, will be hard. People will still send you YouTube links.

One example of this is WhatsApp. I hate it and don't want to support Meta, but 100% of my peers use it so I have to use it.

Having said all that, when YouTube starts to price hike subscriptions and/or showing ads even for paying users (inevitable because of profits), I'll force myself to stop using it.