Doesn't anyone question that youtube is basically run by an ad service? If you really want to connect to people then why does "company x" wants to know and keep tabs?
Why is there a thumbs up or down in the first place? Or even, why doesn't the number of views matter to you in this case. "company x" had a great search engine but now it seems crippled by the fact you can't say: "exclude the top x percent popular results"
I'm writing this because when I searched for something obscure, I go to page 8 of the "company x" results and got slapped multiple times with "suspicious behaviour" notifications and had to wait or solve a captcha.
What alternative funding model do you propose?