>It feels somehow like you're paying the middle man for nothing? They also promote your content and find and auction off ads for you. Unless if you're an adver

>It feels somehow like you're paying the middle man for nothing? They also promote your content and find and auction off ads for you. Unless if you're an advertiser, you aren't paying YouTube anything. If you have a problem with it, you're free to host your content on another platform. Keep in mind that that YouTube has to serve the hundreds of millions of videos that get a handful of views, and if you're a monetized YouTuber, it's only fair to be taxed to pay for hosting these videos as everyone starts in that position.