> Yet those 2-3M channels get the lions share of the views.

...because they're directly tied to YouTube own revenue.

As someone who creates a fair bit of content, and am fortunate enough not to have to worry about the revenue from that, I deliberately try to minimize monetization because it ultimately becomes the main driving force behind your content creation.

Monetization as the only model for content creation leads to an incredibly safe and boring world while simultaneously meaning every piece of content you interact with is trying to extract money from you the viewer.