As I see it they are workforce, they work for Google and the sponsors, they have no way of turning their workforce into money without those, even when patreon or something of the source is involved without the YouTube platform (which might as well be a factory floor of the internet) they have nothing but their work, if YouTube says I don’t like you, they can be fired, so I think they are workforce, once they have a team working for them it is a weird situation because they end up employing people but they don’t own a mean of production properly but in some ways it seems like it so its strange, like Mr beast seems closer to a Petit bourgeois then a random small channel around, but overall I think it’s mostly workforce