As someone who is currently monetized with 5000 watch hours in the past year, I’m super mixed on this. On the one hand, I’m only making like 30 bucks per month, basically nothing, so I can see how YouTube would want to reduce overhead. On the other hand, that $30 bucks per month is a nice little bonus. I’d still be creating without it, but it is nice to have, and, YouTube already doesn’t pay out until you hit $100, so that oughtta reduce most of the overhead. It seems like it’d be a better solution to just raise that to a $200 minimum or something. You’re probably right, it might just be greed.

Putting ads on these creator’s videos AND not paying creators is wild though, no matter how small the channel is.

Side note: Am I at risk of becoming un-monetized?? I know it’s possible.

Side note the second: I host my own instance of PeerTube for my videos - joeltube.com

The problem is infrastructure costs. You’re either spending a metric shit ton of money on hardware or you’re spending a metric fuck ton of money on renting it.