Philosophically I agree with you, but the reality of the situation makes it very difficult to have those views and not be concerned. - YouTube is owned by Goog

Philosophically I agree with you, but the reality of the situation makes it very difficult to have those views and not be concerned. - YouTube is owned by Google. - Furthermore, the world's most popular browser is owned by Google. - Furthermore, even the other popular browsers will forward your location bar text to Google as default behavior. So if I am a content creator, my platform decision is guided by these realities plus: 1) Most folks type what they are looking for in their browser's location bar. 2) The result of this action is most often a Google search result page 3) Google search results seem to favor YouTube over other video platforms So if I want to publish a video review of the iPhone 12, and I decide to go with Vimeo. I am doing so despite all of the above. Let's say I stick with YouTube. What if Alphabet buys 30% stake in Engadget.com and their AI mysteriously starts to "bug out" and de-monetize all the independent phone reviewers. Is there any transparency? Is it illegal? You can also argue that there's no compulsion to depend on YouTube for monetization, but YouTube's very existence is owed to content creators. Folks were on places like LiveLeak and other platforms until YouTube essentially "bribed" everyone into switching over by offering monetization. Now YouTube has a monopoly over the audience. YouTube has the power to hand-pick the next big star by just "tweaking" their visibility. They could even hand-pick the next President. This kind of power ought to concern anyone.