Bantes weekly Youtube videos are now only podcasts with a latter Q&A to help his students in their personal practice.
If you look at Bantes Youtube and it's history you will get a good idea of not only Bantes personal journey but also how he has developed in his style of teaching and engaging in with the online community.
Bante used to teach dedicated subjects without much direct community engagement, even taught in an online video game before, longer discourses, public discussions, public discourses and now a weekly podcast. I assume now that Bante has more responsibilities with the sangha in Canada and various other teachings he is asked to do, his time is less spent online helping others than he used to, like answering questions regularly here and on stack exchange.
I do agree with your POV, it is better to see the face of your teacher rather than just hear a voice via a computer screen (Youtube video) as it also builds a more "human" connection with the teacher but not also is this the world we live in, where people have personal responsibilities and commitments, time is limited but also Bantes teaching methods have changed over time that he has chosen to do a podcast rather than face camera.
There is a wealth of information from Bante on the Youtube channel and a lot of us here that use this Q/A forum have followed Bantes teachings for a long time which in turn has allowed some members on this forum (not me so much) to be qualified to correctly answer your concerns regarding the Dharma.
I would also like to point out to you that this forum was started as an avenue for people to ask questions relating to Dharma and personal practice issues, not as some sort of social media, though community is an inherent part of such a function on this website.
So while I agree with the POV of seeing ones teacher bringing benefit, the use of avatars seems fruitless to me. As well as personally I do not take pictures of myself at all or allow pictures to be taken as not also does pictures of oneself reinforce clinging to an ego but when dead in may cause clinging to you in others.
Also I assume that the avatar function is removed for everyone on this site except more regular users to stop this place being filled with social media type nonsense and possible harm like pornography or worse. I don't think anyone here really wants to dedicate themself to being a full time image moderator, moderating the questions and answers is difficult enough. Remember it would only take one illegal and/or copywrited image to get the website shut down!