I consistently hear people on YouTube complain that the subscribe button doesn’t do anything for viewers, now that channel notifications are controlled by the bell. But it does do something: it puts the videos from that channel in your subscription feed, which is readily accessible on all versions of YouTube. So why do people act like it doesn’t exist? I think it’s super convenient, especially if you’re subscribed to a ton of channels and don’t want your notifications feed flooded with new videos.
Yeah, don’t tell Google, but from back before they bought YouTube, they still have code running to serve RSS feeds for each channel. So, you can have a simple, chronological subscription feed without even needing an account.