It feels like the need for automated systems is a result of the ever-increasing size of the world (there are now nearly 5 billion internet users[0]). For Apple, app review can take days, mainly because doing human review [consistently] well and constantly for 8 hours a day isn't easy[1], leading to staffing issues when bad reviewers get weeded out and only a small percentage of hires stick around. Outside of hiring 10,000 employees just to endlessly review phishing links for 40 hours a week, you need automation to triage these phishing sites and deal with the outcome later such as via on-demand review by a human (which worked in this case, but won't always work - humans still make mistakes). I'm not sure if there is a solution for this problem outside of just not having the safe browsing product if 'makes no errors' is a requirement.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage
1: https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-it-really-sucks-to...