That's a weaker incentive, though. And it comes with a risk of occasional scandals that scare away advertisers, at least temporarily.

I don't think incentives are enough to predict what YouTube will do. The future is uncertain, there are a lot of policies that could plausibly make money, and the decision-makers are people who read the news and have opinions about what's right, not paperclip maximizers. Politics matters as well as economics.