Bots might "watch" Youtube for ad money for the creators and Google, though.

I mean, it would not surprise me at all if bot traffic on Youtube is larger as in bytes/s of video, than actual visitors.

Remember that Google has no interest in disclosing how many bot views there are.

There was this news article about Spotify banning some musicians accounts due to listen farming.

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/great-big-spotify-sca...

Since the payouts are not tied to the individual watcher or listener, scams run rampant. I guess the temptation to manipulate the money flow is way higher than having a "fair" distribution of each subscribers money to the artists.