They make the rules? They can "outlaw" those any time they wish and ban anyone not complying.
And if crap funded by cheap airbuds, sketchy VPNs (reliant on fear-mongering/false advertising), pay-to-win mobile games, etc goes away with it that's even better.
That's far more of a risk for YT to get rid of these than you expect...
Most YT creators earn about jack shit from views on the platform itself. Like, maybe if you have a fair amount of viewers you could earn $1000 on a view that likely cost you that much to produce. The in video sponsors cost YT nothing AND keep people on the platform without them having to pay.
Take it away and all of a sudden you may leave an opening for a competitor to show up.
Even worse, you may get taken to court via some anti-trust ruling.
They could, I suppose. But actually doing so would be pretty disastrous for a lot of smaller YouTubers who derive income from their channels. I would consider that a loss, as the smaller channels are the only things on YouTube that I find valuable. If they went away, I would too.
If ads have to happen, I prefer those to the one YouTube does because at least those aren't tracking me.
I can't believe that I'm arguing in favor of ads here. Strange days indeed. But I'm not in favor of ads, just pointing out the tradeoffs involved.
