Except for these people, it almost definitely is. They have staff, an office, inventory to manage, etc. Most YouTubers nowadays aren't just operating on their own, and thus have financial expenses outside of just paying themselves for their own labor, that can't just keep going if their revenue stream goes down, or even just takes a large enough cut.

It's unfortunate, but that's just how a lot of the content creation industry works right now, especially on YouTube.

GN is literally a sizable business, it absolutely is.

What do you want people to buy food with. Welfare checks lol? Where would they get money to buy stuff for testing. They have an acoustic chamber that's fairly expensive.

Revenue and professional channels are intimately linked and removing the revenue stream would open them up to bought reviews like heiLTT.

It is if you are trying to fulfil the requirements from 2 comments above.