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Possibly reporting bias. Top YouTubers who have seen a large drop in revenue make for good news stories in bad economic times. Top YouTubers who have seen gains in revenue have every incentive to keep quiet about it.

That is apparently the path youtube is preferring. Multiple superstar creators rather than large diverse set of smaller channels.

They steer and try to lock their userbase with those few high performers. That would explain this.

Well, March 31st is the end of Q1, and that article was posted in the end of March (and COVID-19 stuff didn't really kick off until around then), so probably no need to speculate until we see Q2 results.

If youtube pays less for content creation but sells more of the now "free" to it content, it is making out like a gansta.