Tom Scott asks viewers if they know of any interesting places for him to go visit, since his videos are about interesting places and things. Nothing crazy, essentially like a music critic asking if any fans want an album reviewed. Which many will actually charge for via Patreon. The fan who requests the video didn't make the video. Many of his videos contain too much personal experience to be plagarised or anything of the sort, it's obvious that Tom at least has a major role in writing the videos.

Plus, he pays people to subtitle and revoice his videos in a ton of different languages. I think it's odd to assume that he doesn't pay people that help with writing when it's been shown that he pays people for services that Google literally asks fans to do for free.

Calling it "wanting to use ideas for free" is technically accurate but wrong. Asking fans what videos they want to see typically isn't seen as a bad thing. Dude traveled the globe for a decade looking for random cool shit and local town lores, of course he's asking his giant community for leads on weird local things.

I dont know tbh, he kind of shut down any questions in the comments, and I unsubbed shortly after. Plus his little fans got quite abusive when people did ask.