I've been following Youtube since its inception. There is no correlation between quality of the content and subscription count.

People subscribe to channels for political reasons.

Well edited videos with quality original content do not get high subscription counts. Subscription count is the worst possible metric for determining the quality of content.

To make matters worse. There are freaky things that go on with the Google Algorithm that determines which videos pop up in feeds.

I don't think the problems at Youtube are related to culture alone. The google algorithms used by the site make things worse.