*Only directly misleading clickbait.
So they'll continue to promote other forms of clickbait like specific thumbnails or capitalized & ambiguous titles.

Of course they will, The Holy Algorithm loves that stuff. It’s why even some respectable creators have to stoop to that frustrating nonsense.

They don't have to, they choose to. There's still people like Etho who don't even ask for people to sub and post incredibly infrequently and still successfully maintain their views and audience simply through quality content.
It's more a matter of whether you do YT for yourself, or for the money. And nowadays the majority of people do it for the money. That's why the content has become so piss poor over the years too. It's all just commercialized garbage.