In my mind, there is no difference. An advertisement for a business is an advertisement for a business. ...and if I'm consuming the products of someone else's labor, and know (going in) that is a business, that business deserves to get paid. Beginnng, end or in-between.

You know there's a difference. Holding two minutes of content ransom behind one minute of begging for likes is not the same as featuring a subscribe button on the end-card of a 50-minute long video. Unless you're used to aggressive advertisement tactics. Either way, you're losing track of your point. 1. Youtube isn't making them do it. 2. They don't need to do it. 3. It doesn't matter if they do it.

No there isn't a difference if you understand that you are consuming a product of a business operation. ...and that the length of a video isn't necessarily proportional to the effort that went into making it. As for the last part, we're going to have to agree to disagree. Because I've seen way too many podcasts and videos by a broad spectrum of content creators who are willing to get into the reall fine-detail about how YT algorithms----and how arbitrary and non-transparent they are with what they do and how they work-----have negatively impacted their revenues. Especially this "de-monetization" algorithm that YT recently pushed through. Some VIDEO game content creators have seen their revenues drop by some 75% because the algorithm is such a blunt instrument. So blunt, in fact, that many people are wondering if anyone is going to even be able to cover the Call of Duty: WWII game because so many videos on it are being flagged and de-monetized by YT.