Lemmy is a good case study, I would say. Reddit was the epitome of "the front page", until it wasn't. Then many moved to Lemmy, and it was just ok for a while. Now it's getting to where Reddit was before it lost its shite. Not a perfect comparison due to the YouTube monetization, I know, but a good rags->riches->enshitified->rags->riches story. And production quality is much less important, IMO, than content. And, yes, content did increase over the years, but a part of that was video editing technology improvement. Let's take LTT as an example. Before monetization, they had low production quality, but incredible content value videos. Now, the production value (and their paychecks) improved a lot, but the content value isn't what it used to be. It's not bad, it's just less focused on what it used to be. Is that bad? Probably not. But it also means we can start over, and get to the same monetization that we're at now, but without enshitification.

Edit: and I'm not even touching "influencers" in the main comment, who, IMO, don't matter in the grand scheme. They can stay on yt or disappear completely. In fact, if they did disappear, it would make a significant positive impact to the overall content library.

@peregus If by "quality" you mean using AI generated thumbnails, repeating the same gossip as everyone else and talking about their sponsor every three minutes, then sure...