Far from it. You can host your video anywhere you like, but you get the most eyeballs and revenue from YouTube, and that's based on user preference and not on some nefarious activity on their part. A lot of what makes them successful as a hosting platform is the same content curation that people like to complain about.
Maybe not "nefarious" exactly. But YouTube does have a virtual monopoly. And that's arguably illegal in the US. Or at least, it exposes them to additional government oversight.
I think it does. Others disagree. Sometimes it's an interesting discussion.
I'm not sure about this. Besides removing obvious hate speech, which sort of content curation do you mean? I thought its success was due to everyone being able to upload and share video clips. I don't think curation was an important feature.
Maybe it wasn't in the beginning, but Youtube is a Google company now, and their entire business model is based on (mostly) algorithmic curation. The business model of every content creator depends upon catering to the preferences of that algorithm, and their success at doing so determines their value to advertisers. Entire genres of content have come into being and have been destroyed overnight because of the algorithm.
Youtube's success mostly comes from driving discovery of new content through recommended channels and videos.
I'm not sure the discovery/recommendation algorithm is the same as curation. It seems to me these are related but distinct fields.