You yourself admit that Youtube is a platform that provides you with great user base and discoverability. That's also the exact reason what every other platform uses to charge 30% (Steam, Apple Store, etc). So why is it expected here for Youtube to give away all that for free, and allow you to completely turn off all the ads making them zero dollar, while you are having your content hosted for free and making money externally?
You're right, they shouldn't give all of that away for free. They deserve to make money for their service. I don't really have an opinion on the business model, or whether it's right or wrong to force ads on all videos.
I just become worried when they use their monopoly to extract as much value as possible, far beyond what they need to sustain their profits. I think monopolies are bad in principle, and Youtube is another example, just like Microsoft was, cable companies are, telecom was, railroads were, etc.
> I just become worried when they use their monopoly to extract as much value as possible, far beyond what they need to sustain their profits
But I'm not sure that's clear. There's been a distinct increase in the number of in-video ads (Raycon, Skillshare, ExpressVPN, Squarespace, Curiosity Stream, and so on), which probably corresponds to a distinct decrease in Youtube enabled ads. So with that logic, Youtube is probably making less money from top creators, who have been skipping the middleman entirely. This seems more like a step to retaining existing profits instead of increasing them.
