I agree that there are a lot of noticeable cracks in Youtube lately. I have seen some videos discuss the growing difficulty of traversing the YT algorithm. There is definitely more videos, and it gets difficult for one's videos to get discovered unless they already have a following. On a similar note, RoosterTeeth just went down. They were popular back then, but lost viewership along the way. YT viewership seems to be very cutthroat, and AI is only making it more difficult.