I honestly think that Youtube's monetization system has done a lot more harm than good. It's allowed content creators to completely abandon the business side of

I honestly think that Youtube's monetization system has done a lot more harm than good. It's allowed content creators to completely abandon the business side of their own business. What's slowly become clear is that there is only a small niche of content creators that Youtube advertising really works for. For big brands, it doesn't work, they can work out their own advertising deal and demand a massive premium for this, think things like Mr Beast, beauty vloggers etc. Then you've got small creators, they don't do enough volume to actually drive any advertising revenue. Youtube might be showing adverts across millions of creators but the payout is pennies, these people are better off running Patreons for their true fans. Finally, you have the high quality content creators, that go off to subscription services like Nebula because their investment in the content is never going to be paid for through the crappy CPM you get at Youtube. The good news for Soft White Underbelly is what I've just said above - look, there are plenty of business models out there that can work, and they're actually much more valuable revenue streams than Youtube ads. The bad news is, what exactly is Youtube at this point if all of their high value content is disintermediating their revenue model? Well, advertising to kids, which is minefield, advertising on music videos, which they're doing worse than Spotify, or advertising on things like Podcasts, which are adverts on content that you otherwise would get ad free elsewhere.