> rather than any immediate concern over loss of income etc.

I don't know if that's necessarily true. Apparently there's not a significant loss of revenue _from YouTube_ from the reports of these creators. But some sponsor deals might be structured based on CPM, and so a suddenly decreased view count could have a direct revenue impact from those sponsorship deals.

I wonder how YouTube thinks about that.

They probably would prefer zero third party sponsors, because adding sponsored content dilutes the value of the on-platform ads. Features like “commonly skipped section” and the timeline view intensity histogram reduce the value of sponsorships.

But if they eliminated sponsors, creator revenue would drop significantly and so would content production.

The nuclear option would be to require all sponsored segments to register with YouTube. That would give YouTube way more control and dramatically reduce creators’ business flexibility (how do you tax a donated 3d printer?).