I like him and watch all his videos, but the ease of that justification is why we are on a long slippery slide straight into dystopia.
The only way to stop it is to stop giving an inch. But that will never happen, guys like him have way too much to lose to take a stand. Plus most of the other YouTubers will happily continue so it will have been for nothing.
It's completely unrealistic to expect an individual to do the "right" thing here. When that right thing means their career ends.
I don’t think anything he said is incorrect, but he does seem to miss the world of possible incentive structures that would reduce clickbait.
Maybe that race car driver is a brainlet who would otherwise be living in poverty, so we shouldn't give him too much grief for it. Probably not, but maybe. But the veritasium guy? He's surely a bright guy with plenty of opportunities; he could have chosen another line of work.
A race driver is a much more elite position. There are less of them than there are Youtubers, and there's a lot more attention on you. A dismissal of a sponsorship could be spun into a big PR move, if they wanted to. Compare that to a single social media actor, you'd have to be an absolute huge name to make any sort of difference, simply because there are so many others out there that will immediately fill the gap you'd leave.
Maybe Derek (I had to google his name) would be able to choose another line of work, but what if your passion is to spread knowledge about science and such to the general public? As much as I dislike them myself, I really do believe that social media such as Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok, is the best way to achieve that goal today.