Based on your numbers, ~260k plays per dollar. The person in the submission would have to get ~2600 billion plays to get $10 million.
Something doesn't seem right with those numbers.
There are people on forums doing the same thing as the person in the submission. 1 person with ~30 phones can generate about 15-20k streams in a day doing it manually.
I agree. I think what you describe is also seen in sponsor block.
People mark story telling videos mostly as filler content, so a beautiful 10 minute video is chopped down to only a minute or two and most of what makes the video great is removed.
Live music sets where people segment out the intro and outro to songs, so tracks are mashed together for a non-stop music experience, which I think misses the mark with live music.
I also find a lot of sponsor segments are done quite badly like the person who made them doesn't care or is in a rush. Eg. Today I came a sponsor segment that started 11 seconds too early. I only recognised it because it kicked in half way through a sentence.
Don't get me wrong, I still use the extension; I've just disabled most of the auto actions.
Many moons ago I tried Darrow for a day and got the same feeling as what your described. I decided the original video titles are superior and disabled the extension.