I feel like it would be best to proxy YouTube, or subscribe to paid indie channels like nebula, but without a user base and without ad revenue or subscription revenue I don’t know how quality content can come to PeerTube. Maybe I’m just missing the content but when I’ve checked it’s all very low quality, just random unedited webcam vblogs mostly.
YouTube was founded by 3 former PayPal employees and bought by Google for $1.65 billion just over a year after its creation. It launched its partner program in 2007 which is when people could start directly making money from the site - but for most big people on the platform, making money was the eventual goal anyway. There was always a plan for YouTube to make oodles of cash and for people to make money making videos on it.