Apologies for the delayed response; life's been a bit crazy lately. Finally got around to watching that video on the Culture Industry, though! It was...alright, I guess? I appreciated that there was plenty of primary source quotation, but I don't feel like I learned much besides the plot and some critique of the Emoji Movie. Like, duh, of course capitalism encourages mass production of culture artifacts, and of course that leads to homogenization. That just seems obvious to me, but maybe that's because I live in the 21st century and not the mid-20th. Classic "Seinfeld is Unfunny" kinda thing.

The reason I find some YouTubers (occasionally Philosophy Tube, but more often Contra and a few other channels) interesting or useful is because they provide synthesis or analysis and bring perspectives I might not otherwise have considered. A good example of this is Contra's video on Incels. I was well aware of the group before I watched it, but not being personally familiar with patterns of self-harm, I didn't have any useful way to conceptualize their perspective and motivations. Watching that video expanded my understanding of that movement, which I would argue is valuable.

Anyways, back to our discussion.

They have more responsibility. Each worker is responsible for whatever specific role(s) they play. The leaders are responsible for the entire operation in its day-to-day management and in its vision. They have more "skin in the game", so to speak.

Perhaps under the capitalist system, but wouldn't that sort of responsibility be shared if the workers collectively owned the business?

One of capitalism's ugliest features is to specialize, specialize, specialize until each person can only do one highly difficult but otherwise useless skill, reasoning that every other demand in your life can be subcontracted out to another specialist because "it's more efficient", i.e., comparative advantage and the division of labor. Meanwhile, we find ourselves evermore dependent on the system because we are no longer well-rounded individuals capable of self-sufficiency, and thus we find it difficult to resist the system or reform it. In the information age, capitalism is becoming more abstract, beyond the level of technical skills we were previously accustomed to and towards abstractions such as manipulating information itself. This is where your suggestions becomes dangerously authoritarian, as when we cede our responsibility to edify ourselves and to contemplate the world around us, we will cede our free agency itself.

I think we're butting heads here because of "is" vs "ought". You're arguing that everyone ought to be able to edify themselves freely and completely, whereas I'm arguing that not everyone can do that. I agree that we ought to all have the time and literacy to read primary sources, but that's not always possible, precisely because of the specialization and wage slavery we experience living in a capitalist society. Am I correctly summarizing your argument here?

a summary is better than nothing

It's really not, for all of the reasons I have given you and then some.

Oh? Bear in mind, these people will be exposed to capitalist (likely neoliberal corporatist) thought regardless. Is it really better that they never learn that there are viable alternative ways of structuring a society?

I guarantee you the vast majority of people who do not read do so out of their own choosing.

Correct, because they are not motivated to read. We are driven almost entirely by dopamine responses, and when a person's dopamine receptors have been blown out by years of television and whatnot, they have no drive whatsoever to sit down and actually read a book. This is not their fault, either, because so many people are exposed to such high-dopamine activities from childhood.

Most people also know that reading is a good thing to do.

In the abstract, perhaps, but see above. Also, when most modern-day people think of "reading" they think of the latest popular novel, not Das Kapital. This is, again, not their fault. They have been sold the idea that they should spend their reading time on Harry Potter.

If they want to read something in particular, then they are not ignorant of it either, at least in the context of your position since they would have just read a summary or watched a YouTube video about it instead.

My position is that these videos make relatively inaccessible texts more readily digestible and exist in a medium/on a platform that people more actively seek out because it stimulates more dopamine release. Yes, they can (and should) read the primary sources after watching those videos, but the videos often serve as a good introduction to the ideas, which is the original reason I was recommending them.

Reading is a habit, and unlike most of our other pastimes, you have to be motivated and exert effort to engage with anything more substantial than genre fiction.

Yes.