This would seem to be what might be variously called a Tragedy of the Commons [1], a Multi-Polar Trap [2] or similarly the Prisoner's Dilemma, but at scale [3].

Obviously in the original Tragedy of the Commons, farmers with sheep grazing the common land, the tragedy was that if you didn't try to graze as many sheep as possible, someone else would and so you'd lose out, but because everyone was doing that the commons died out and everyone lost out.

(Disclaimer Generalisation) but that would seem to be what's happening here, "everyone" trying to maximise their utility just eats the system and it becomes unsustainable (be that content viewers trying to get content for free, Youtube trying to maximise revenue via maximal advertising, advertisers producing shit ads that I hope nobody ever acts on but then how else does money enter the system?, content creators and AI coders trying to make the best living).

Though unlike the original Tragedy of the Commons where everyone suffered equally, there's an interesting irony that the (content creators) who produce the most value (without which nothing else exists) have the least (individual?) power in the relationship probably "die" out first.

You could equally point to a similar situation in the music industry or any industry for that matter that doesn't have a strong enough or fast enough feedback loop to detect that the system is eating itself, but also have some ability to act on it.

As DanielS points out in the video below it's a coordination problem. If enough individuals in any of the groups defect from maximising their utility the system is stable. Be that content providers providing free content, advertisers giving free money without making you watch adverts, content viewers paying for content so no advertising needed, AI coders not producing a mechanism that summarises videos so people don't watch the videos and hence the adverts so no-one gets paid, <Youtube something>). You can extend this to coordination outside the system, you could argue this is why governments exist to provide a meta-framework that makes it illegal to do something that undermines the system, e.g. by having laws that prevent watching content for free.

You could also coordinate this at the meta level, if everyone involved in the problem got together and made sure that everyone was being looked after or say the content creators got together and collectively refused to provide any free content...

But obviously in the current system none of this is really possible, the more things change the more they stay the same, this would seem to be the price of progress, the same problems arising over and over just at increasing scales (and stakes). Just see the problem of musicians now back to square one because of streaming...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEcLXqwZJQw

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

EDIT: The Prisoner's Dilemma isn't the best example here as prisoner's escaping jail despite doing a crime does have a negative societal impact, just I'm not aware of a better example from Game Theory?

TODO: Find a better explanation of Multi-Polar Traps that doesn't refer to Israel or Russia...