X appears to be juicing MrBeast’s views to woo the YouTuber to the platform, pushing video upload into users’ feeds as an unlabeled ad::undefined
There’s still plenty of people doing that. But their uploads will be inconsistent when they upload and quality. The views will also be low so YouTube’s algorithm won’t recommend it unless they pay to advertise.
My YouTube recommendation page is full of channels with sub 100 subscribers. Because I actually watch them since I find those videos engaging for different reasons. If you actually watch small YouTube channels YouTube is more than happy to serve those channels to you.
I do get sub 1000 view recommendations from YouTube but I don’t know if I would assume those creators haven’t paid any money. You can pay to push your videos to a small, very targeted, audience for fairly cheap.
That’s a fair point, however with a good bit of the videos recommend to me I highly doubt they are paying for exposure. Many don’t have the absolute basic skills when it comes to cinematography. Personally I enjoy watching random non professionals show their interests. But I don’t think they are paying to show their videos to people like me.