Especially considering that YouTube gets the content for almost free
Google pays out about 50% of ad revenue to content creators, that isn't "almost free" that is many billions of dollars.
> In the end, YouTube takes a 45% cut of a creator’s Premium earnings, just as it does for ad-generated revenue.
https://vidiq.com/blog/post/youtube-premium-creator-revenue/
The fact is, Google takes on no risk and does none of the work of creating content, and takes a 45% cut for distribution, and is free to continue changing their terms to make things worse for content creators.