Ok, if I remember correctly, YouTube barely generates, but generates nonetheless revenue for Google. There are many ways to make more money without fucking over its users by cutting costs:

• downgrade old videos with small watch count to 720p30

• make people pay for hosting >1080p60 content

• do not allow private/unlisted videos

• straight up remove 10h looped videos - they take so much space, but are technically spam - both for bandwidth and storage

And my go-to solution: focus on sponsorships as main source of revenue. They are the only ads I can tolerate and are actually effective from my experience. YouTube can just take a cut from every sponsorship on YouTube video and everyone will be happy.