

They could implement restrictions to block VPN traffic. But that would be repealed as fast as it came when these very congressmen would phone angrily their district on why they can work from their million dollar home anymore.
Support: Sorry VPNs are now blocked and you cannot work remotely without them
Congressman: Who are the idiots that voted for these laws
Support: Well, you and your friends
Let’s not forget the unmentioned income thanks to gathering all that user data.
The real value of Youtube (and social medias in general) is not the raw revenue they generate.
It’s being able to be able to predict what will trend in advance to sell ads to anyone, anywhere. Which is proven by their 200+ billions in revenue from ads from all services.
It’s extremely likely that in an alternate universe where Google doesn’t own YouTube, their profit today is lower than what they currently have.
But like you said, poor YouTube is not making money explicitly on its own so they’ll use it to justify any cost increase attempt when they already know what the real money maker is.