Always a chance that YouTube will do something that means YouTubers can no longer make money. Most small channels just upload because they enjoy making content. I don't see what George has done to you personally to insult him.
You handled this person very well, be proud of yourself for acting in such a professional way. If I was in your position I cannot say I would've behaved as well as you did xD
As Koala said YouTube could always do stuff that results in them not making money, but you also have to realize YouTube is one of their biggest sources of money. Sure you can say YouTube is dying but is that necessarily true? It is bigger than it was say 5 years ago. I remember 6 years ago when nigahiga had 1 million subscribers people thought that was the biggest anyone could get, now look at PewDiePie at nearly 60 million subscribers.
There is no lie in the sense that AdGate definitely shook up YouTube, but monetization is returning to normal and it is a possibility that with these new rules implemented to YouTube that content creators will be making more money than ever before because advertisers will be more willing to spend money on videos that are better to share their company and brands on. There is also the subject of the US economy inflating right now and overall it is a very unstable environment.
You can definitely look at the results and say, "YouTubers are making the lowest they have in years", but there's also the possibility that number could grow exponentially. Google is not going to just give YouTube up, it is again one of their biggest if not the biggest revenue source they have. They have to play defensively right now after so many ad companies left them and caused the revenue drop in April, they cannot risk losing more advertisers. Google is one of the companies leading a big initiative and they need a large amount of revenue to keep fueling them.
As for Freedom! dying that is up to debate aswell. YouTube has two ways to play this out right now:
A) Give people more reasons to join networks.
B) Give people reasons to not join networks.
They have done a lot of B in the past few months, but at this point they're almost making it to the point of, "Why even join a network?". This way because of so many scummy networks last year that did leave a bad reputation, like Fullscreen having a dodgy contract, or Machinima locking partners up for life. It's not exactly YouTube's fault for having to take precautions like this because some networks and subnetworks are and were respectively abusing these powers they had. There are less reasons to join a network every month and YouTube may decide as the ad market to go up that they want networks to be more in control of this and push YouTube further than ever before. This could end up in a situation where networks would be able to show MCN specific ads or work out business deals with companies to show better or more relevant ads that net YouTube, the MCN, and creator more money.
There's so much more than meets the eye my friend.
