Your theory that it went beyond the requirements of the settlement with Viacom is interesting, but unless you have insider information as to the terms of it, it is at best, speculative.
Would you stake billions of dollars on the legal theory that if YouTube followed the DMCA to the letter of the law, publishers would not be able to successfully sue them?
Counter-anecdote: None of my recommended content on YouTube is from established media companies. YouTube's profiling of my account definitely puts me squarely in the "Tom Scott and Technology Connections" demographic - but even so on the times when I've let YouTube's auto-play do its thing I've never been steered towards mainstream media from Viacom and the like (unless you count the occasional clip from a decades-old Discovery Channel docu or unauthorized BBC Top Gear upload)
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What weirds me out about "normal-persons' YouTube" that I see when borrowing non-tech-sector friends' devices is there's a lot of top 40 that's right there - I wonder if that's what you're seeing?
If YouTube was divorced from Google it would have ceased existing a decade ago.
It's immensely complicated, because videos are cached all around the world. Someone in Bangladesh watching YT videos is not always fetching them from the US, you can be sure of that.
So "profit" is definitely an opinion, not a fact. If YT was divorced from Google, it would become a fact.
YouTube's primary means of profit is as a music platform playing RIAA protected copyrighted music mostly owned by Sony, Universal and other media conglomerates.
YouTube's profits are fully dependant on whether these conglomerates allow their popular artists to host music on the platform so your idea is very very misguided.
If YouTube was divorced from Google, YouTube would be friendlier to creators.
Counter argument: some of the top performing content on YouTube is made by the establishment. But then again, Google created this status quo by using their algorithm to promote content that satisfies their partners.