YouTube lived off venture capital, search sponsorships, and content hosting. Venture capital is long dried up. Search sponsorships are just advertisements but clogging your searches. Content hosting isn't really needed anymore since every large media company has their own streaming platform. Lot has changed since 2006.
wildn0x
How long back did you use Nord? Their Lynx protocol works very well and never had issues. I'm planning to switch to Proton mainly due to cost saving. Cancelled my subscription to Nord and it's just a button on the website. Feels the Nord hate is overblown. Would I recommend it to someone doing serious stuff where a leaked ip could mean literal death? No way. But would I trust any VPN out there with my life? Not a chance.
I'll take YouTube over any other streaming service. With how much I consume of Youtube, only felt right to pay. Practically my cable at this point.
Also unfair in the questioning. From my own experience im going to assume the person speaking at the campus is someone yelling how all are damned and calling women whores. Sadly, very few people other than atheists speak up.
YouTube has already been helpful to a degree. Sometimes I'll open their AI summarize and it will give all the details along with timestamps. There are videos where I saw the summary and passed on watching because the video was mostly filler material.