It would actually be a kind of reasonable argument, or at least more reasonable than the currently popular "Google is rich so they should provide services for absolutely free".
People have argued this but Google has made it clear why they won’t charge - that is their moat. By pricing the service as free, they price out all competing services by making it so that all creators, new and old, will use YouTube by default. Especially with new creators, with no startup cost and a huge audience, there is no reason for to use any service that requires payment. This effectively tanks all competitors and is why the only surviving competing streaming services target niche audiences. For example, established creators who have the sway to bring an audience with them.
How about no.
Why would anyone that doesn't make their money by wasting everyone's time and working on ads or isn't a stock holder in Google waste their time with ads? Have you ever tracked your life wasted by ads?
They will never charge and are clearly afraid to actually block ad blockers, possibly because they know they can't. I know I would watch a black mute box before every video before ever seeing a YouTube ad and sponsor block makes the rest of YouTube tolerable.
I don't like watching Youtube. The quality is crap, search is horrible, you are tracked.
offering something for less than it costs to produce is illegal in some countries. and while being generous can be ok, doing so to keep out competitors is the reason why it is or should be illegal. it should at least be illegal for companies that have a monopolistic market share.
I think plenty of established YouTubers would like to switch to a platform that gives them more control (even if they pay hosting) if it didn't incur a hit to their viewership. New YouTubers use it because it's free and has a network effect. Old YouTubers use it because they're locked in.
This is fine to think like this, there is no reason to care about the financials of billion dollars companies
If content creators pay Google to distribute, that wouldn't pay for the surveillance/sales infrastructure, and it would take away the advertising profit center.
There's no business reason for Google to change unless the creators also pay at least as much as the expected advertising profits, fully amortized.
If they do that, then it'll almost certainly be cheaper to host elsewhere.