It's not quite that black and white. I *also* used to work at Google (not YouTube). Realistically, YT moderation could be way more hands off than it is. Web search for example is or was almost entirely algorithmically "moderated" with nowhere near this level of drama or problems, and the web is much larger than YouTube.

The difference isn't to do with what algorithms can do. The cause is philosophical differences between typical founder/engineer types and, to put it crudely, Susan Wojcicki - a woman who basically lucked her way into her position by being the sister of Sergey's wife and those two were the sisters that rented Larry and Sergey their first garage. The sort of people who built web search and indeed most Google services were hard headed engineers who got where they were by making tough decisions and defending them through rigorous debate with the rest of the company. Due to the totally open communication channels between teams they had, more or less anyone could comment on any other team's decision, and they did! The fierceness of discussions inside Google even 15 years ago would make most of corporate America feel dizzy: it wasn't an environment that rewarded milquetoast agreement with whoever was in front of you. At all. They *wanted* their services to be used by everyone because they were small and the best way to become successful was by serving everyone equally.

Clearly, Google is not the company it once was. Wojcicki is the exact opposite of that type of person: a woman who ended up running an already very successful service through a series of personal lucky breaks, rather than because she built it. Inevitably if you achieve great success by drifting through life and avoiding fights you end up making whatever decisions get you shouted at the least. YouTube is a textbook example of that mentality: people are banned and unbanned supposedly "without rhyme or reason" except there's a very simple rhyme and a very simple reason: bans are the result of whoever shouted at the YouTube leadership the loudest most recently. Typically SJW activist employees, but not always.

The only way to fix YouTube is to replace Wojcicki with an engineer who has spent years BUILDING the service instead of simply inheriting it, and who has a strong commitment to the original fairly libertarian principles that built the company. Google won't do that for two reasons:

1. Realistically 99% of candidates that'd fit that mould are men, and men are second class citizens now.

2. Sundar Pichai is exactly the same kind of person as Wojcicki. He is more genuinely successful: he did a good job of Chrome and other projects. But he is ultimately the same type: he drifts and does whatever gets him shouted at the least. I can't help suspecting that he was picked for that very reason.