Yeah that's the core of it. I've seen people say their finely crafted essays get 1% of the engagement of a video. And in video there is no natural equivalent of the hyperlink, so ranking and discovery are now fully neural and centralized around Youtube.
All social media sites including sites like YouTube and reddit rely heavily on ai powered recommendation algorithms for ranking and discovery. They have done so since the introduction of the first TPU around 2016, when Instagram also decided to get rid of the chronological feed. Outside the US TikTok has largely replaced YouTube
At the end or in a corner that disappears, it's not as central to the experience as hyperlinks were. I really miss YouTube annotations. The thing I believe comes close is danmaku comments on bilibili and Nico Nico
