If that was truly their primary concern, why wouldn't they limit the scope of the change to smaller creators? Could it be that they were looking for a post-hoc justification for a desired policy change?
Would you trust YT to define what a "small creator" is? It opens the door to other policies being applied only to "small creators" as well, and I don't personally like that thought
They already apply different rules to small creators. For instance, you must have 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time per a year in order to monetise videos.
That's not even close to what "small creator" would mean on YT
My point was that your slippery slope argument was a bit bonkers because YouTube already has a mechanism to impose varying rules on channels based on size.
You also cannot have comments on videos that feature or target children
That's a response to a legal requirement
They already do that. They don't pay creators at all who have less than 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours in the past year.