That's still the case though. YT is probably the only platform where you can be successful doing very niche without having to sell out or churn out influencer tier content for outreach. The revenue stream is embedded, the audience is huge and channels can be pretty well siloed (as opposed to say, reddit where you can have a niche community either get easily overrun, crossposted etc). Actually the only time I've had "influencer/Drama" type of content was when I chose to watch it, otherwise YouTube is still pretty good at not pushing content you just don't watch at all to your recommendations

(Even though the recommendation system is overall awful and I can't believe an army of engineers have actually been working on it for a decade, but I digress)

Most people don't make (enough) money from YouTube though, and to get to the point where they could, they spend hundreds of hours of their time.

I'd say that's passion and i see nothing wrong with getting rewarded for doing something you like and other people enjoy watching.