Technology

Google can afford it

Yes but if you had a store in a chain that wasn't turning a profit and constantly kept costing you money with no solutions in sight, you'd eventually shut it down and call it a day without some other reason. I think right now the only thing keeping YouTube alive is the level of unmitigated backlash they'd get for dumping it. Sure, they control the main video hosting platform on the internet but what are they able to do with that? Hold onto it and talk about it at parties? Not every small creator has extra ways to donate to them, not every creator rises to the level of whipping your wallet out, but should still support them no matter how miniscule it is.

They're already raking in $60 billion a year in profit so I see no need for an alternative

My brother, that is not an answer. Services have costs, costs need to be mitigated with revenue, things worth doing usually turn a profit. I'm asking you for an alternative knowing one doesn't exist or the multi-billion dollar company would have already tried it. They're limited to advertisements, selling your data to brokers, or asking for a subscription. We've got adblockers, tracker blockers, and the content is still free to access without a subscription (for now). Freely using a service that isn't free is not now nor will ever be sustainable,

The data we put (on Google servers) should be publicly owned

Hahaha.. to own them we'd have to pay for them. Things like Lemmy exist because people volunteer to accept the cost of hosting the instances. A company built to earn money is not going to do that. The broader problem is capitalism, sure, but that's a different topic. Youtube does, and in my opinion (without societal changes), should try to make a profit on what they bought, developed, and now host. Their splits with creators are fair and I worry they'll become less so as their options become fewer.

The sole purpose of Blackrock is to invest rich people's money

Yes but those investments are in Blackrock's name, giving them legal control. Yes, they can lose their clients if they fuck up and depending on how, be liable for returning some or all of that money, but no matter how you look at it they still have that control. There are very few of us who are truly beyond being replaced.