I consistently hear people on YouTube complain that the subscribe button doesn’t do anything for viewers, now that channel notifications are controlled by the bell. But it does do something: it puts the videos from that channel in your subscription feed, which is readily accessible on all versions of YouTube. So why do people act like it doesn’t exist? I think it’s super convenient, especially if you’re subscribed to a ton of channels and don’t want your notifications feed flooded with new videos.
This used to be true for a while, specially around the time the bell button was introduced (so the conspiracy theory is youtube made the sub feed worse on purpose), but it no longer is. There is absolutely no one showing any verification of missing sub uploads anymore, and it was super easy to verify when it happened.
YouTube has a long history of enshittifying itself and the UI with every feature release or redesign, but they seemingly, finally, stopped, after the dislike button. They got distracted with Shorts, which, for better or worse, meant they stopped fucking up other stuff.