It's more "there was never a time where the draw of youtube was that it wouldn't censor". The draw was simply that it hosted videos.

Sorry, I might not have been clear. My point was more that there was never a point in YT's where Youtube's moderation policy was part of a decision for an uploader to go there instead of some other platform (excluding some edge cases like gov't dissidents in certain countries)

The implication of the original post was that YT's growth was in part thanks to some moderation policy that made it more attractive than alternatives. But to my understanding this was never the case, and YT's growth was from a bunch of other things. Including it basically being the only reliable option for a good part of its early life (how I remember things)