I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me sooner. Even if you just use a junk account to like and subscribe it’s the cheaper version of donating.
PBS Terra, for one, has actual climate change news and science. In addition to all the other cool things, and, ofc, PBS kids.
Here’s the list: NOVA PBS official, PBS, PBS Terra, American Experience PBS, Frontline PBS Official, PBS Documentaries, PBS NewsHour, PBS kids, PBS Eons, PBS Origins, PBS SpaceTime.
On monetized accounts (which PBS is) YT pays out creators based on advertising revenue. The way they calculate that is a complex, proprietary algorithm, but essentially it's based on view count and retention, and skip rate. So subscribing and liking doesn't actually directly help to fund the channel, HOWEVER more subs and likes usually translates to your videos getting pushed to more and more people (based on a totally different, complex proprietary algorithm), which usually leads to more views, and therefore more ad revenue.
I'm pretty sure us ad-blocking users are still technically contributing to the ad revenue, but over time it can affect the results that advertisers are seeing, and therefore could effect the amount of money they are willing to spend on advertising in the niche or demographic that your favorite creators fall into.
Does that all make sense?
No. But not because you didn’t explain it well. It’s because the way YouTube does things just actually doesn’t make sense.
I know :/
You explained it just fine with the information available to you. I understood it and I have a hard time understanding the meaning of statements over text
It's not your fault YouTube doesn't share how their algorithms work, so I kinda think the other person was pretty rude in their reply. Could have worded it a lot better