[fiddlerwoaroof]

I think there’s a sorites paradox here: if it were actually impossible to make money from digital video, then YouTube wouldn’t exist at all because it couldn’t pay for the hosting and bandwidth it needs to distribute videos. What is true is that YouTube is basically not harmed by some fraction of their users blocking ads but, were that fraction to hit some percentage of the total traffic, YouTube would be forced to either discontinue free video hosting or charge to watch (or it would be killed as unprofitable).

[rezonant]

Exactly right. I think we are incredibly far from that breaking point, and what Google is doing is chasing growth for their shareholders more than anything else, especially at the end of the free money era.

The platform itself may be replaced but the incredible result of the YouTube platform is that there are millions of excellent creators who are making a living by making their videos, and even making enough to keep raising the bar on their work.

It's not a given that growing such a swelling stream of creative work will ever again be possible if this one dies out. YouTube was in the right place at the right time with the right subsidization available while they made the systems work at scale, and scale them up to insane hyper scale levels. This happened because of the advertising bubble, which is showing heavy signs of stress especially in the last few years. Society is already pushing back against the data collection that makes advertising at these scales as lucrative as it is, and if the bubble finally pops it's possibly it'll never inflate this way again.

This is why it's important to support the small creators you enjoy in some way. Direct contribution is certainly the best of them all. Sure this might not be relevant for superstar YouTubers, but take for example Technology Connections. Alec is an amazing communicator who puts insane effort (full time) into producing super informative videos about electronics and engineering.