Correct but that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with intentionally gaming an algorithm. TV never had an algorithm and some people were a lot better at making TV that others wanted to watch than others.

You seem to be of the belief that for anyone to be the most successful at this field they have to be gaming an algorithm. But perhaps there’s really no algorithm, or perhaps (my opinion) the algorithm is so good at showing people what they want that you can instead just focus on making videos people want.