Where, exactly, is "the place" for "serious content" like this?
In a place the creator is in full control and isn't funded by advertisers which will pull their funding for anything they dislike.
That's pretty much the nature of publishing content - if you're not independent there's always the tension of your funding source dictating the content.
Literally any other site where one can upload videos would be better.
But putting that aside from a person using YT often from incognito mode and similar:
- there is a overlap between "content farm trash" and "entertainment visdeos" what you might seem as "content trash" other might see as "short simple entertainment".
- there is a lot of educational content on YT, sadly it is often not featured that much on a "incognito" front page
- there is a lot of entertainment content with a bit of educational content on it.
- there is even more purely entertainment content on it
- there is questionable kids content on it (but YT explicitly split out YT Kids because it (at least officially) doesn't want kids on the normal YT (kids != teens/young adults)
- there is questionable "content farm trash" it also tries most to "play to algorithm" so it might seem that there is a lot of it when you visit YT in incognito mode/without personalized YT preferences. But it's not what keeps the platform alive.
- there is a lot of TV content on it (at least in some countries) (e.g. a recordings of TV news programs uploaded by the TV channels which produced it).
- there is quite a bit of serious content, discussions, etc. on it sadly mostly demonetized.
- there is a bit of more then just a bit of very very wrong and misleading content on it.
Or in other words YT is a platform for all content, from extremely serious discussions over good entertainment, grate educational material to pointless 5 minute craft videos and ending with conspiracy theories.
You can make that case, but it's hard to beat youtube. It's not just a matter of the amount of content, but also support on settop boxes/devices, quality of playback,etc.
Having said that, I'm starting to go to the effort of building an offline library. To me, the youtube death of a thousand cuts is happening because of their increasingly heinous ads (like google search) and strengthening copyright enforcement (since their position is now in place).