I’m very skeptical of that argument.
- Millions of people didn’t throw out their desktops overnight.
- Lots of tech channels finding their core audience that’s actively supporting and often growing on platforms like patreon aren’t showing up in their metrics while fluff videos are getting picked up outside their community on mobile and "performing well“.
So something definitely seems to be going on.
To me, ads contributing to "views“ metrics seems the most logical since YT wants to incentivise ad watching but I have to agree it feels like every day someone has proven a new theory so it’s hard to say what exactly is going on.