I finally got fed up with ads on youtube and decided to put my money where my mouth is vis-a-vis supporting business models that I want to succeed (paying for content instead of with my eyeballs).

I have a little-used gmail account that I registered a few years ago, as my original gmail became completely overrun with spam and I switched to Fastmail.

I added a credit card to the account and tried to pay for Youtube Premium and was immediately flagged for suspicious activity. To reactivate my account, Google wants me to verify my identity with photos of goverment ID and a full KYC-style form.

No thanks. I signed up for https://nebula.app/ instead - they were able to process my payment on the first attempt.

Chances are they saw the login as fraud given it went unused via years and the first thing that login did was sign up for YT Premium via a credit card.

A potential problem they're trying to prevent might be where money launderers use google accounts to funnel YT Premium money to specific channels via watch time (since Premium pays out a lot more, and pay per minute watched[0]).

0: https://youtu.be/Rh5hL47z2us?t=100

I'm sure they have the best intentions but there's literally no way to appeal it. Why can't they verify the credit card the way every other merchant seems to be able to?

Sounds like there is a way to appeal it. You just have to provide a copy of a photo id.

Fair enough I should have said there is no reasonable way to appeal it.