yeah, FWIU they are an increasingly popular monetization channel in addition to YT's built-in ad-rev system (which is famously very bad for creators)
*) and conveniently for YT that out-of-band monetization channel - which they don't profit from - is the exact thing that's negatively affected by an overall drop in view counts
*) and conveniently for YT that out-of-band monetization channel - which they don't profit from - is the exact thing that's negatively affected by an overall drop in view counts