Not entirely true. First the platform is free, but also is the content that people provide and without it Youtube wouldn't make sense - so it's not a free service, it's a partnership. Second, for many people YouTube is the primary source of income, and I'm sure there would be plenty of content authors who'd be glad to pay a service with human moderators rather than bots - GIVEN THAT they get to keep access to the same traffic that YouTube provides. That's the key thing, you can't just go somewhere else when all the users are on a few popular platforms. If it's not for that, many high-profile authors who get their videos demonetized on stupidities would have left YouTube long time ago - but they can't, big players keep them in a checkmate position due to the form of monopoly on viewers that they have.

And that means you can't just say "If you don't like it, leave, it's a free service", because it's not that simple, as leaving in reality means "give up on your business", and most of people just can't afford that. Youtube has them cornered and thus needs to be careful, since it's not a game, it affects people's lives. For many accidental blocking of channel can mean they'll be living in their cars until the Gods of Google show mercy and fix the error.... and if they do it, since sometimes you don't even get a meaningful reply on what happened, just a template message.