That used to be the case for me too, however recently some actually valuable channels I follow have started to clown themselves with stupid thumbnails just to get views. Also, I don't really need that signal since I already block all YT recommendations and global feeds so I only ever see channels I already subscribe to. And I only subscribe to small channels in relatively obscure niches of science, technology and hobbies like pre-90s vintage computing. Most channels I follow only have a few thousand subs and I don't think any of them even approaches 100k subs.