> that there is no serious appeals process, and no third party oversight of moderation decisions

Yes there is, see [0] - also posted by me in another reply in this thread, where I mention that my own YouTube account was suspended identically to OP earlier this year, but was restored 3-4 hours after filling out the form. The decision may or may not have been AI-driven, but I'm pretty sure there was a human in the loop behind the solution.

Don't mistake me for a Google fanboy - I had my primary Gmail account locked last week for daring to use a VPN, so I'm currently looking at de-Googling myself a bit. But to be fair, I was able to fix both issues within a few hours.

[0] https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/suspended?p=yout...