Political bias and contempt for the audience aside, they never even did anything to set themselves apart from "new media" blogs and websites. On YouTube they were so completely dominated by amateur upstarts that they must depend on the platform itself biasing the algorithm in favor of old media. They used to have comment sections and closed those down. They completely fail at interacting with the Internet in any meaningful way. Things like reddit, Google News and social media sharing links to news stories are all that kept them afloat, and they wanted to charge for link sharing too.
What you could have done differently is simple.
Actually tell the truth, rather than just pushing your personal propaganda
Stop having blatant, obvious contempt for huge amounts of your potential audience
Keep repeating steps 1 and 2
Political bias and contempt for the audience aside, they never even did anything to set themselves apart from "new media" blogs and websites. On YouTube they were so completely dominated by amateur upstarts that they must depend on the platform itself biasing the algorithm in favor of old media. They used to have comment sections and closed those down. They completely fail at interacting with the Internet in any meaningful way. Things like reddit, Google News and social media sharing links to news stories are all that kept them afloat, and they wanted to charge for link sharing too.