That's absolutely going to be the end result - the only question is how long before they fully do it. And I think it'll be fairly quick because AI has forced their hand. Ideally they'd do it slower and boil-the-frog linux users into using trusted, signed-kernel distros (make Ubuntu lock down like ChromeOS, SteamOS).

Another very recent change I noticed is youtube will only play the first minute of video without all their javascript (and so bot detection) loaded. It used to play with just youtube.com scripts enabled. Their bot detection for fully reset, clean browsers also now defaults to 'you're a bot'.

I think they've offloaded storage to tape, or maybe it's just stored in one datacenter, because of massive AI generated content. Crack down on bots so nobody can ever play 90% of uploaded videos except the original uploader and friends he direct links it to. Bots can't make money off AI dreck, more youtube profit, investors happy.

In any case they're making big changes so better archive stuff while you can!