At the end of the day, Google’s paying them more for my views than if I were an ad-viewing user. So for ~$20/mo (for family plan), that’s much more financially viable for me than if I were to pay $1/mo to all 100+ creators I watch.
Are you trolling? It feels like you are. At no point in this thread is anyone saying you need to start paying more. If you’re paying $20/mo for premium, and you’re using an arbitrary amount of $1 as the donation minimum per creator, then why not just donate $1 to 20 different creators for each month? Then the next month, donate to the next 20 creators, then the next 20, and so on. Believe it or not, all of those creators still get paid more by your direct donations – even measured over several months – compared to the tiny fraction they’d get from that same money via your premium subscription.
It seems like you’re trying to argue some moral high ground of funding content you enjoy on youtube. That’s fine. But it takes about 10 seconds of critical thinking to find ways to do it where you pay the same, the creators get paid more, and google gets paid nothing.