Oh God I don't want my YouTube hidden behind multiple paywalls of varying quality. I agree that something should be done about it but it's frankly a miracle of inertia that YouTube hasn't been more aggressively monetized.
And yes, before anyone comments with "have you seen YTs monetization???!!?!!!!", I do in fact mean even more than the shit show it currently is.
YT is the one I'm mixed on, on one hand, the ads are annoying AF if you're not premium and they're becoming more user hostile towards ad blocking every day
But on the other hand, hosting and providing bandwidth for video is not cheap. Hosting and providing bandwidth AND allowing users to upload whatever they want no matter the length (I think there's a limit of 10 hours, which is MORE than generous IMO) OR quality (seriously, who even has the setup to watch 8k videos lol) is REALLY NOT CHEAP
So who else other than Google can provide what YT provides at scale?
I'm guessing it probably does. It brings in like $30,000,000,000+ a year. What it actually costs to run is seemingly a closely guarded secret, but I'd probably say it's a fair amount less than the thirty billion, since they aren't having to pay a third party company or anything for hosting any of it.