[microsage]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how this has anything to do with "cracking" the algorithm, or really with cracking anything.

YouTube openly admits to having a metric for scoring videos, which, of course they do. Then they accidentally, seemingly, leak the scores of videos. It turns out that content that is really successful on YouTube has a really high score. Meaning the score... works.

I suppose there's the question of whether the score is the cause or an effect of the success of these videos, though it's almost certainly a bit of both, since that's how virality and feedback loops work.

[Accujack]

I think the thing a lot of content creators object to is the lack of equity in the system and the sieving process that happens to content.

All else being equal, content that can be paired with ads is preferred over other content to the extent that equal access to the base service is impaired. IE, Youtube is not a fair place where anyone can upload a video and become a sort of "star", it's just another extension of the existing Media corporations, where advertising dollars rule and the standard for what content is "ok" is based on the complaints of the most easily offended segment of the population.