It’s probably both. The talk in YouTuber circles is that YT is actually quite good at detecting bot traffic, but I have no hard evidence for that either way. However it doesn’t take very much to juice you in the algorithm. All you really need is a few thousand views in the first few seconds and the algorithm will surface you very widely. The most important metrics are not views, but click-through and early retention in a video. A few bots could bootstrap that, but the rest of the views could well be legit.
Remember that these videos aren’t just hacking the algorithm. They are hacking us. The brain science of the thumbnails and how they are edited is real. A typical real creator video might have retention somewhere in the 50-60% range (people who watch the majority of the video). Content farm videos are more like 90% because people are waiting for the toothpaste on the cellphone. 90s retention will skyrocket you in the algorithm and billions of people will be surfaced your video. This is why YT has a strict policy against misleading and clickbait thumbnails (which they don’t enforce even a little fairly).
