> One of the things that I find really disturbing is that, every so often, google will just "change" the payment computation and suddenly people who were putting 50-60 hour weeks into youtubing to make a fairly minimal living are suddenly seeing their income cut by huge percentages.

This is why a lot of people encourage youtubers to diversify away from ad-revenue. A youtuber that relies solely on ad-revenue is like a supplier with only one customer. They are at the complete mercy of the whims and competency of their single customer.

This is a large part of the reasoning behind patreon. Then there are people like CGP grey that diversify to podcasts, have patreon, sell merch and get paid-for promotions.