In this case YouTube can do literally anything they want due to the lack of real alternatives. Hosting videos for free, for anyone (and any number of viewers) to watch, for free, is rather predictably not a very profitable business model. If you want to see what it takes to actually be profitable with such a model, look at the average free porn site. Extremely intrusive ads everywhere. If you don’t want to pay, and ads are the only revenue, advertisers are the customer, not you.
In this case YouTube can do literally anything they want due to the lack of real alternatives. Hosting videos for free, for anyone (and any number of viewers) to watch, for free, is rather predictably not a very profitable business model. If you want to see what it takes to actually be profitable with such a model, look at the average free porn site. Extremely intrusive ads everywhere. If you don’t want to pay, and ads are the only revenue, advertisers are the customer, not you.