We didn't even notice it happening, like frogs being boiled. E.g. try being anonymous on a fresh Android device now. You can't even access the play store without logging in.
Also from Wikipedia: "YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. The trio were early employees of PayPal, which left them enriched after the company was bought by eBay. Hurley had studied design at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign."
Getting respect from employees these days is not difficult; most of them are extreme conformists and worship power for its own sake. They will interpret any dumb words out of your mouth as words of wisdom. Even if everything you say is idiotic, they will bend so far as to assume you speak in metaphors.
Still, I think YouTube is better than average for social media. Its censorship of words sucked, but its censorship of ideas wasn't so bad. It was worse on other platforms.
I think TikTok holds this position, not YouTube. Indeed, YouTube seems to be pushing really hard for Shorts to be a viable competitor but it doesn't seem to be working.
Or, do you mean rewarding in terms of monetization for creators and not engagement?