This is a bit too blunt a look at it. YouTube exists as an ecosystem with increasing competition. View and subscriber counts are their core incentive and feedback systems they have with the actual producers that make their whole ecosystem work. Without those there's no real reason for people to put videos there.

This as an open and celebrated system drives producers to advertise for YouTube via the almost-compulsory every-video mention of liking and subscribing and forwarding videos to friends.

Youtube is well aware of this, hence things like the iconic long running physical play button trophy delivery system.

I'd also say more broadly that making such sweeping claims for YouTube as a collective entity not caring at all about viewers is too reductive. It's more defensible and relatable to claim that, though there may be many people working for YouTube because they deeply care about a mission of democratizing multimedia publishing, the incentives and structures around it being a PBC often lead to decisions which drown out that care from corporate heads who are more profit than mission driven.