I have read every reply in this thread, spent hours reading and conclusion is as simple as this.
Maintain same *browse features* CTR consistently or close to same for days = views
If you get 10% CTR beginning but within a few hours it drops down to 6%, you're dead
If you get 10% CTR beginning but drops down to 6% within a day, still dead
You have to keep the CTR. Problem is most people in this thread are starting from scratch so getting pushed to browse feature is hard for them to even get started.
Judging by the thread to get pushed to browse feature with new channel you need to share to reddit and get some organic traffic there, not a lot. Then keep trying till you hit big.
Take note though this thread is about videos under 1 minute because watchtime is easy to maintain 100%. With longer videos it's still possible but harder to start from scratch! That is the whole issue. Don't start with long videos.
I have several 10+ million view videos and the CTR will go down as impressions go up. These videos haven't got consistently 10%+ CTR, I think some didn't even need 10% CTR to get ranked and get passive organic traffic.
What I notice is that the successful videos have an higher CTR at the beginning, then the algorithm pushes more impressions, which makes the CTR go down, so there is some weird balance that is reached there. I have never bothered to look at individual CTR% per feature (browser, suggested, etc). The most important is that the video is suggested, suggested = more views coming from new people. Im guessing views from new people are more valued than search views or anything else.
What's f*cking frustrating is that sometimes people only want to watch the same thing on the same subniche. For instance, you do Fortnite videos, but Fortnite videos about X subject, they sub, and they don't want to watch just Fortnite in general, but Fornite AND the same f*cking thing, and at some point they become bored of that too and wouldn't click, so yeah, having subs is a problem unless you are able to raise their interest consistently. You need constantly a new stream of people, which is only achieved by your videos getting suggested and getting new subs.
Also I see people in my niche with shitty thumbnails, half assed content and repetitive titles that aren't very special, and little to no SEO, outranking better stuff on the same niche, so luck is involved, you need to have luck so the algorithm likes your channel and you enter in a good row of uploading videos, getting suggested, uploading video, getting suggested etc.
YT and internet stuff in general is an endless paranoia of thinking that your channel has been downranked because some bad luck combination of algorithm readjustment puts you below other idiots that are doing trashy content and get lucky. This is frustrating when you have a whitehat channel where you work hard on content because you want to have watchtime as high as possible, which also leads to less content being uploaded often. Btw, im not sure how relevant constantly uploading stuff is. You are most likely producing garbage if you upload all the time. Of course, if you can somehow get good CTR with nice watchtime by uploading often, I guess you will get more views, but im also paranoid that if you enter in a spiral of bad performing videos in a row, you will lose organic traffic from already ranking videos. So like I said before, this game is a constant paranoia.
This thread does not offer anything new, but it is useful for noobs I guess. And there are some broad assumptions, like claiming the algorithm resets "every 6 hours" when we don't know.
BTW, im talking about longer 10+ minute videos, not shorts trash. Some different metrics may apply for this garbage I guess. But I don't bother with tiktok tier stuff since it pays really low, at least on tiktok, not sure if the RPM goes lower with shorts on youtube, or the RPM is the same and having a lot of views compensates only showing 1 ad at the beginning. Anyway, I don't even upload shorts in my channel because once again, im paranoid it will change the algorithm, I will stick to what i've been doing, which is work on the video and hope you get lucky.