With Reddit shutting down its API setting a precedent in the corporate tech world (and Reddit was a major outlier in that a ton of their users are technical minded and support third party clients, YouTube does not have that kind of userbase and will not get backlash for it), Twitter doing whatever the fuck they’re doing, and Google already hellbent on destroying ad blockers, the days of Newpipe, Invidious, and Freetube are numbered. Wouldn’t be surprised if they implement Netflix level DRM tomorrow that makes alt clients impossible. I say savour your alt clients while you can guys, you won’t be able to soon.
Youtube pays content creators.
PeerTube costs content creators money.
There’s plenty of content creators aware of the issue, which is why nebula, floatplane etc. exist, but those are subscription models which most people don’t want to pay.
Sure, youtubes money is not all that creators get, see for example LinusTechTips 2020 numbers. But gutting your revenue by ~25% would hurt hard.
Especially when costs go up at the same time.
YouTube pays content creators poorly so most of them rely on direct sponsorship rather than YouTube rev share.
Also YouTube is a nightmare for content creators because you can have videos delisted for a few swear words and the process is random and unpredictable. They would benefit from more independence.