The thing to understand is that YouTube can pay creators without taking money from viewers because it shows you ads, tracks you, and is backed by a huge corporation that can spend lots of money just to stay #1 in that space, and can deal with copyright claims.
There can be no free alternative without ads and tracking.
Even if someone rich enough paid for it with no expectation of profit, as soon as it got too popular, an armada of lawyers would descend upon them to shut it down.
The only real alternative is following creators you like on their Patreon, but then you have to pay them for creating content.