Yep, it is monetization driven, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. Making quality content costs money, and people have to get it back somehow. Anyways, I t

Yep, it is monetization driven, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. Making quality content costs money, and people have to get it back somehow. Anyways, I think YouTube has peaked, or at least plateaued. One simple reason is that it has saturated its market. It can no longer expand without targeting other markets, like it did recently with "Shorts", which is an obvious attempt by Google to get into TikTok market. Previously, it tried attacking Netflix with YouTube Originals, without much success. BTW, TikTok seem to still be in the organic / passion driven phase. It may not be what you are looking for, or you may not like "the algorithm" or the fact it is Chinese, but it is much closer in spirit to the early YouTube, with small time creators and regular people who just want to put videos on the internet.