Given that YouTube uses the like and subscribe buttons as inputs for its recommendation algorithm, doesn't this feature just aid and abet content creators in gaming YouTube's system?
The best example of this is clickbait thumbnails. Nearly every creator I am subscribed to has expressed hatred for them, and yet they mostly still make them. Why?
Because, when youtube shows your thumbnail to someone, if they do anything other than click on that thumbnail, your channel/video is downranked in the algorithm (because it has "low conversion"). Every creator is in a zero sum, fully antagonistic war with every other creator to get you to click on their video instead of someone else's. If a channel has low enough "conversion" for long enough, youtube will stop showing that video to potential viewers, including your actual subscribers. For a channel to survive and make enough money to pay rent and things, you have to play the dumb algorithm games. Patreon is literally the only alternative.
Youtube prefers it this way because then they get to crowdsource more addictive and "engagement driving" content through millions of creators, rather than just a department in google (which honestly they probably still have). They didn't have to tell anyone to make "more stupid clickbait thumbnails", they did it themselves because it was encouraged by the incentives given to them. A Youtube where everyone plays the algorithms and thumbnail games literally earns more money and views than a youtube where every creator is only driven by their own desires to make good art. Google has been doing this since they bought Youtube. Early on, only videos longer than ten minutes could get ads, so every video ballooned to ten minutes and one second in length.
I’m wondering what an unbiased survey would even look like.
Maybe I have just become more attentive to these things or they have become more prevalent, but I notice this blatant optimization for the Algorithm(tm) more and more. I guess this is the meta you need to play in order to stand out/make it in the torrent of content that is YT or social media in general. I also see this as an example of Goodhart's law as creators try to optimize for reach and thus likes etc. while the original intention of the YT Algorithm(tm) was (or should have been) to serve you content you will enjoy.