I don't know, I do feel there is at least some incentive to promote "amateur" youtubers: people watch their videos a fuckton more.

If we're going by foot traffic, it's obvious that people are far more willing to sit for 3 hours watching Joe Rogan than to sit for 10 minutes watching Jimmy Fallon.

I don't fully know how it all works, of course, but it does seem like they're shooting themselves in the foot a bit. Wouldn't it be more profitable to say to a company "I can get your ad 1,000,000 views right now, but if you get the fuck off my back with this control thing, I can get it up to 10,000,000"?

But then the cynical side of me fully agrees with you.