You're right. They do it for no reason, people hate it, and it costs them views, pretty much all creators just really want to put their faces on thumbnails.
Look who it is, the person that thinks there's a global conspiracy to make less money, solely in to put faces everywhere despite people supposedly hating it.
Bruh I just want you to supply the data you claim to be citing. It's super easy and standard practice. It is not my job to research the point I think you are making.
Or, you could simply say you don't have data to back up what you said. Either works and neither is as embarrassing as coming back to this well over and over while entirely missing that I just want to see your data.
You can find it by using a search engine of your choice. But here's a snippet from one I found in like 5 seconds:
In the SEO company's analysis, they took a look at some of the most viewed videos on YouTube currently and found some similarities between them within their categories. The company sourced YouTube API data in July to conduct the study and analyze the most popular content on the site.
On average, thumbnails that feature stills from the video or images get 1.7 million views, compared to thumbnails with animation, which average 1.4 million views. Seventy-two percent of the most popular thumbnails include a face and get 921,000 more views, on average, than thumbnails without faces.
Believe it or not, YouTube thumbnails have faces because humans like faces. As I stated. It's not some global anti-capitalist cabal conspiring to earn less profit by purposely crafting thumbnails that people don't like.
People are drawn to faces. This is an established scientific fact that I laid out in my very first comment. You aren't special. It applies to you too.
Now, do you have any data on people disliking seeing faces in media?
Except it's not, because it works, as I have already pointed out.
Are you stupid? It gets more people watching the video, and maintains engagement throughout the video when they see faces. If you think successfully getting people to watch your videos is "stupid", then you're clearly a bit clueless.