YouTube is...

YouTube under Wojcicki went to the dogs and is staying there.

YouTube's MO now seems to be to get as many people as possible to upload videos while denying channel monetization to the overwhelming majority of uploaders.

As far as YouTube is concerned, it works as they still can and do make money on unmonetized videos by making them available to the paying viewing public subscribing to YouTube Premium which they now push very hard.

But they still like to dangle the hope of channel monetization in front of people so people continue to upload and provide content (for free) and also continue to work their channels and watch other videos and, to this end, greedily lie that new YouTubers can have their channels monetized once they get 4,000 hours of views and over 1,000 subscribers.

But the reality is that they are lying and most channels reaching 4,000 view hours per year and 1,000 subscribers will never be approved for monetization ostensibly for the reason of failing YouTube's review against their guidelines because "re-used" content will be found on such channels (without specifying what that content is and in which videos it can allegedly be found), and you can count on such content being found. Youtube also has other tricks not to approve your channel for monetization, including dragging out the review process indefinitely, literally for years.

What's more, YouTube's so called guidelines, against which new channels are allegedly reviewed, are changing every month in line with the dictates of their all-consuming greed and with a view to getting more and more content for less and less in outlay and expenditure.

It is important to remember that in 2018 YouTube already acted in bad faith when it demonetized tens if not hundreds of millions of small creator channels that had been fully in compliance with YouTube's so-called policies in effect at the time. Their only fault was YouTube's unwillingness to pay those channels for content anymore, however little that pay was per individual channel.

It is hard to avoid reaching the conclusion that YouTube is now greedy, rotten to the core, stinks and is nothing but a giant turd and a criminal gang of greedy thieving capitalists, appropriating people's videos for own commercial use (over YouTube Premium if nothing else) and as ever operating outside the spirit and even the letter of applicable laws in most countries while faking concern over topical issues and using them as a pretext to squeeze YouTube uploaders even more.

So, in light of the above, my suggestion is not to upload videos on YouTube anymore and even not to watch YouTube at all but if you can't help it and still do, don't ever pay them for anything, especially YouTube Premium, make them work for free, and use a good ad blocker too.