It's not a highly restricted platform at all, there were literally videos of translated Hitler speeches trending with hundreds of thousands of likes, even though the CCP absolutely hates western nationalism.
This is the platform that led to the proliferation of newspeak terms like "unalive" to circumvent content restrictions. Such speech restrictions were never a thing on FB, IG, X, or YT, yet this form of self-censorship has spread to those platforms anyway, because TikTok users have become so used to it.
While there aren't direct speech restrictions in platforms like YouTube, you're leaving out the crucial detail that mentioning words like "suicide" gets your video demonetized, which directly causes similar self-censorship.
YouTube pays creators based on advertising deals making some topics far more valuable, while other topics have become very sensitive to advertisers. That’s related, but different from censorship.
Creators are still free to use YouTube as a platform to discuss sensitive topics with a very large audience without paying per viewer, unlike say advertising or standing at a street corner talking to passersby. As such YouTube is still supporting the discussion and distribution of said content.
Restrictions become more effective when they are less obvious.
When as has been demonstrated their algorithm ignores the number of upvotes in favor of massively promoting viewpoints it cares about, that’s also vast suppression of opposing viewpoints but in a way o get creators to quietly comply rather than try and push the boundaries.
