If YouTube notices the subscribers and views are bot generated, it will take all of them away (YouTube does this quite regularly). In the worst case, this might lead to your whole channel being shut down.
Instead what people do, is run video campaigns to promote YouTube videos using Google Ads and this is very much within YouTube's TOS and 100% safe as per algorithms of YouTube and this way, a YouTube channel gets real engagement in terms of subscribers, like & comments.
"If YouTube notices the subscribers and views are bot generated,
it will take all of them away (YouTube does this quite regularly)."
although youtube can do this, there are plenty of services where the views and subs sticks with no drop.
"the worst case, this might lead to your whole channel being shut down."
although this can happen, it happens so rarely these days. one case i know is where very massive kids channels were caught buying an insane amount of views to make money off adsense.
however this is not common at all.
youtube cannot prove who bought the views, or you can just buy fake views to your competitor and terminate them.
i have run a lot of channels with fake subs and views and so have the people i know, and there was zero case of terminations unless it was for some other violation.
"Instead what people do, is run video campaigns to promote YouTube videos using Google Ads and this is very much within YouTube's TOS and 100% safe as per algorithms of YouTube and this way, a YouTube channel gets real engagement in terms of subscribers, like & comments"
people also do a lot of fake views that push videos into recommendations and it starts getting real engagment.