Of course it's Kotaku. I don't get it, why do they feel this overwhelming need to point a finger at youtubers whose views are only, at the very MOST, 0.7% of that of Disney+ subscribers.
D+ has around 153 million subscribers and the most the Acolyte could get was 14% of them for the first three episodes, then dropped to just 2.1% as the series continued (according to the original Deadline Article the first three episodes got 11 million views over five days then dropped over 30%). And obviously none of them were buying the merchandise, which is the most important part. People don't get that Star Wars stayed as relevant as it did because people bought the merch even through the 16 year gap between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace. Clothing, books, toys, posters, costumes, VHS/DVDs. I know it was a gag in Space Balls but merch kept this franchise alive. Now they believe just watching something is enough to keep it going, they actually make fun of buying merchandise, as if having toys and stuff based on a property is a bad thing.
But no, can't blame the fact that the show was never going to recuperate it's $180 million budget. Just blame Youtubers who Disney doesn't even care about.