YT is currently a most critical piece of the WWW: the informational content and intellectual participation on YT competes with its complement. Those who want to reach a public through video content use YT. Whether you want to find past productions or the latest input from intellectuals, in video form, you go to YT. To lose YT - to use access control over it would be to lose it - would be a most immense damage.
It might be to you, but I don't follow your generalization. I spend a lot of time online and personally wouldn't shed a tear if YouTube stopped existing tomorrow. Not because I feel any animosity towards the platform, but because video content is of limited use to me. It is not an essential, and irreplaceable part of the internet. Also, to go back to the original argument, nobody is talking about taking YouTube offline.
Absolutely not: it's objective. You "are doing it wrong". You must have a very naïve idea of that part of the Web. Read below.
> YouTube ... an essential, and irreplaceable part of the internet
Oh yes it is. It's the video half of it. And it means that "half" of the paramount intellectual contributions are there.
The "news" are there (the Springfield times and the Patagonian Mirror), the "intelligence" (the interview to the Prestigious, the interview from the Authority, the exchange from the Thinkers, the commentary from the Author, the piece from the Periodical...), the "institutes" (the Conference, the Presentation etc.), the "academy" ("""only""" the courses of the MIT, for example, and courses from many other Universities and free Professors), the "divulgation" (a large amount of divulgators of primary importance from 3blue1brown to Steve Mould, Lesics, Asianometry...), the inquirers and commentators in all areas and disciplines, the museum of the historical pieces that must be preserved out of preciousness and importance (from the voice of Freud to the lessons of Dirac), and a massive wealth of Arts and good entertainment.
The value of the above is beyond the scale; its attendance should be taken for a requirement.
A kid that grows up without access to that is something that must be disposed of, wasted, spoiled - "sorry kid, in the ditch. You have not been exposed to Culture, now you are valueless. These things must be absorbed early".
And beasts that restrict access to e.g. the _free_ lessons from the MIT are to be treated as less than beasts.
And the perpetrators of such damage should pay.