Matthias Wandel comes to mind as exceptional here - almost 2M subscribers as I recall, a popular 'second channel' too, and way against 'youtube scream face' and similar nonsense. He's done a few 'shorts' since initially saying he didn't (as I don't) see the point, but other than that, standout top of class etc.

Came for the wood gears, stayed for the most efficient way to kill mice

I was trying to think of a way to word this same thought.

I would expand on it slightly by adding that "Good Thumbnails" are complicated and are not necessarily "Clickbait".

I just hope that the use of metadata is enforced using AI the same way copyright is being enforced. I think a better approach would be to corral/wall-off this learning content sub-platform, similar to how kidsyoutube is walled-off. I wouldn't mind typing youtube.ed or edutube.. or something else. The value of youtube would be in the big iron behind it, so the front-end can be anything, as long as it's policed to comply. Example of it not being police. I make a video and I call it "Trump's documents classification". I then use the metadata to insert words used in FBI classification and voila..