To play devils advocate, a lot of what you described is just about the hustle culture of YouTubers and how the platform has evolved aside in its meta. People figured out that using an essay-like format and having a video hook gets more views. And that slow videos with less information get less views. All of that would’ve happened regardless of the company.

There’s also a hustle culture where these fun side projects are now jobs because YouTube pays their creators. That’s led to some good content, but also a mountain of trash. All of that happens regardless as long as YouTube is paying anybody.

The algorithm absolutely does a lot but the algorithm would exist regardless. All of this is inevitable because it’s how humans work. Also a lot of the content you ask for still exists, you just have to sift to find it.

YouTube is an interesting case because most of what they do wrong has little to do with algorithm and all to do with DMCA protections and poor discoverability (separate algorithms).