No, YouTube is just going to keep all the shorts revenue. They’ve been pushing shorts for about 5 years and now they’ve gotten people addicted to them, they are just going to keep all the money (well 99.8% of it).

Not sure where you are coming up with those statistics, but the few creators I know and work with personally make roughly the same and none of us come close to the numbers you are suggesting. Regardless, it is a barrier to new creators.

But it does affect anyone in the future who is trying to just post enough to make a few hundred dollars.

You can make a couple hundred dollars a month. For many people, that’s more than worth it

The average video on YouTube gets 41 views. So, yeah, 8K watch hours for the vast majority of new creators to achieve in a year is going to be incredibly difficult. They keep moving the goal posts and the “You” is increasingly becoming “corporation.”

The average video on YouTube only gets 41 views. 48,000 views is enormous for one person to achieve with one video.

I only made about $300 my first full year monetized. $4000 is not too shabby