I had a somewhat similar experience at a much smaller scale a long time ago. I used to buy and sell domains. Bought one that was very close to being on the first page of Google results for a keyword related to personal finance.
Did a bit of sprucing up the page, dropped a few links, and it did get on the front page for a few months, with AdSense paying me several thousands dollars a month while it lasted. The page itself wasn't a scam per se, but it was roughly 1000 medium-effort words on the topic I wrote in a day, along with a few original photos that took another day, and a couple of inline AdSense ads.
It didn't deserve to be on the first page of results. I guess the "kingmaker" thing still exists where big tech decides who today's winner is, and doesn't always get it right.
On the bright side, the algorithms are way more fair and even handed than the human editors of old. I don't think the majority of YouTubers, Twitch streamers and bloggers would ever have made it past the editorial desk at traditional media companies
Saying this in jest, but there was a time when this was highly respected and I feel that the number of places that have them must be diminishing quickly - or a shadow of their former pasts.
Because traditional media companies (I assume TV, radio stations) have a limited outgoing bandwidth in terms of outputting content, so they have to prune a lot more? The argument you are making is not in favour of content-ranking algorithms vs humans, but in favour of Internet-based media platforms (YouTube, Twitch, blogs).
Even if you put human editors in charge of a video website, there's very little chance they would approve someone like Mr Beast for example (before he became famous). They would likely judge his looks (innate human bias), plus his high budget format (self preservation with the bosses) and say his is an unfeasible show. Only an algorithm could have green lighted Mr Beast's show
Did a bit of sprucing up the page, dropped a few links, and it did get on the front page for a few months, with AdSense paying me several thousands dollars a month while it lasted. The page itself wasn't a scam per se, but it was roughly 1000 medium-effort words on the topic I wrote in a day, along with a few original photos that took another day, and a couple of inline AdSense ads.
It didn't deserve to be on the first page of results. I guess the "kingmaker" thing still exists where big tech decides who today's winner is, and doesn't always get it right.