As soon as people start paying Google for the 30,000 hours of video uploaded every hour (2022 figure), then they can dictate what forms of compression and lossiness Google uses to save money.

That doesn't include all of the transcoding and alternate formats stored, either.

People signing up to YouTube agree to Google's ToS.

Google doesn't even say they'll keep your videos. They reserve the right to delete them, transcode them, degrade them, use them in AI training, etc.

It's a free service.

That's the difference between the US and European countries. When you have SO MUCH POWER like Google, you can't just go around and say ItSaFReeSeRViCe in Europe. With great power comes great responsibility, to say it in American words.

Its not the same when you publish something on my platform as when i publish something and put your name on it.

It is bad enough we can deepfake anyone. If we also pretend it was uploaded by you the sky is the limit.

"They're free to do whatever they want with their own service" != "You can't criticize them for doing dumb things"

Ye it is such a strange and common take. Like, "if you don't like it why complain?".