Does YouTube really showcase the truly talented or help non-talented people gain some fame?

Both, plus “talent” is kind of a relative thing and in the eye of the beholder.

No, they repeatedly promote the same people over and over again. there are a lot of people on youtube who make great videos who will never be featured simply because youtube is too bland. youtube only want content makers who make videos similar to what you will find on early morning television. the so called “family values” content.

They also censure a lot, and are basically very manipulative and deceptive to boot. for example, there where videos made by youtube who where so bland and commercial that they got 3000 thumbs down, but then youtube faked their ratings making it look like they only had 200 thumbs down and 1000 thumbs up.

Basically, youtube are only interested in bland commercial content, and will not help promote or give fame to anyone with any kind of controversial content. sure, some people with controversial content do get some fame on youtube, but no thanks to youtube helping them, they do it them selves, and are always at risk of being blocked or banned or censured in some way shape or form.

EDIT:

here you have a video by theamazingatheist on the so called “ground zero mosque”. as you can see, it has ¼ million views. a lot sure. but youtube never supported this user or featured him, he got to where he is by his self.

then you have this video with 5 million views by raywilliamjohnson, his videos are featured all the time, and youtube help him get more views. and as you no doubt notice, he is far more bland and commercialized. sure, his videos are enjoyable, but there is no need to feature him over and over again.

also, if you are too controversial, youtube has other ways of hiding you away in the shadows. for example, there is a page where you can see what videos are the most viewd, most rated, most commented on etc… but if you are too controversial, and make it to that page, youtube will manually remove your video and hide you.

@poisonedantidote The thing about YouTube is they are not consistent on what they consider bad taste or not. Ihave had vids that were at best PG-13 that got flagged as bad taste when there are vids such as these which I feel is not very commercial but they get a lot of hits.

Disguised as news or information/education:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lu0qhRrIow

Just plain backdoor arousal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4_GukyFrs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3dXG-ylEn4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GllWVYpijMQ

It does both.