You could say the same for all media. Television is advertising-driven, radio is advertising-driven, even the most respectable of literary magazines is advertising-driven. Most content is pandering to someone or other.
> Can you quantify "affects" and "so many people"? YouTube is mostly an entertainment triviality, even (especially) in the realm of politics
Again, you could (and many would) say the same for television or what have you. It would still be corrosive to society if a single entity controlled the majority of television, or the majority of radio, or... - and that's much the situation that YouTube is in.
I don't necessarily disagree, but what's your point?
> It would still be corrosive to society if a single entity controlled the majority of television, or the majority of radio, or... - and that's much the situation that YouTube is in.
This is already the case. Additionally, I don't think you've demonstrated that YouTube's video moderation policy is "corrosive to society"
Could you explain what you mean by "public space"?
> vital part of the public discourse
I don't agree. In my view, YouTube is one of the lowest forms of public discourse, its fundamental purpose is to generate ad revenue and the nature of the content hosted there reflects this pernicious incentive. Yes, YouTube does have some great things on it, but it's just one tiny facet of "the public discourse".
> Court-like processes are the appropriate standard for decisions about the use of something that affects so many people.
Can you quantify "affects" and "so many people"? YouTube is mostly an entertainment triviality, even (especially) in the realm of politics, I don't see how videos being removed from the site is important.