YouTube has been dying for years now
If by "dying" you mean "growing up into mass-market, big-money commercial media" then, sure, its been dying.
The comments threads have always been an internet Mos Eisley cess-pit, so I'm unconvinced the social aspect have ever been particularly prevalent, and the competition amongst content creators is obviously intense, but to say nobody goes there is just plain wrong.
Heck, the content glut means the likely hood of hitting relevant content quickly is higher than ever, quality notwithstanding.
Too late to edit and spare my blushes sadly. Still, it got a sheepish chuckle out of me when I finally twigged, so it's not all bad news!
If you can find a way to get the people either providing or consuming the media to pay, that might work (though not so much at eating YouTube's lunch as serving a different market).
If you want to monetize that with advertising, good luck: YouTube's content restrictions follow the general trend of big advertising-supported media, because its what the paying customers for that want.
It's why the walking dead can show gratuitous over the top violence, but they have save "They're fucking with the wrong people" for the blu-ray.
Can't have that swearing. Oh no.