It's almost perfect, except for the fact that I really like being able to thumbs-up videos I like, to support the creators. I feel really uncomfortable not having that option.
- It's also not as though you're upvoting/liking videos other than theirs, so they won't rank lower because you didn't support them.
- I'm sure the folks at google figured out that watching a video is already a sign of the content being interesting. When using the official (web) player, it clearly uses this to generate recommendations (to many people's frustration)
- You can always share videos with friends or on Mastodon etc. where appropriate, that draws more eyeballs than a passive thumbs up button anyway and thus helps the creator more
The math doesn't work like that—if you can't Like any videos, then all of the videos you watch have an infinitesimally smaller Liked ratio and count than they would if you could. Any given video isn't competing with all the other videos you watch, it's competing with all the other videos anywhere on the site.
I’m sure they’d rather you watch the ads or pay for premium.