The top youtubers that I've watched talk about this all the time. The value to them is being able to share something they love with people who share the love of the same thing. Most of their friends come from their fan base. They also get a lot of feedback from the people in comments and learn from them. It's a two-way interaction. Sharing something like gaming takes a video platform like youtube to show most effectively how they're playing the game. I've seen the criticism somewhere about youtube that they all watch each other's stuff. I don't see that as a criticism. For many, that's the point of youtube. That's like criticizing Hubski for people reading each other's posts. For many, it's an interactive community where people are talking to each other. You have to be a registered user to comment, so all the commenters are also registered potential content creators on youtube. Secondarily, youtubers want to be able to make a living from their efforts so they can continue doing more of the video stuff. Pewdiepie was working at a hot dog stand to continue posting his videos. He says he didn't really expect that he would make a lot of money from it. At the time he started, it wasn't easy to make a living from doing that. Pewdiepie has said that he has never sought fame and doesn't care for it. He could live in Los Angeles for the increased money making opportunities but he chooses to stay away from there because in LA, he's seen more as "famous". Fame is really a by-product of what he's done over the years. He really couldn't have foreseen it because when he started, youtube wasn't big enough to create this many followers. For some people, I think the value of youtube is the same as the value of posting on a forum like Hubski. It's people sharing what they like with like-minded people. Just as a hypothetical, if people were sharing what they liked on Hubski, then it was bought out by Google, turned into a revenue sharing platform and then exploded in popularity, would the people who are posting here now and got famous through that process be entitled to privacy? If some had made enough money to rely on that income as a job, should they be required to find another job and quit posting to reclaim their privacy?If being famous (I don't know what other value being a 'youtuber' could possibly bring) is your chosen method of making your way in this world, you have no expectation of a private life.