They recently laid off 90 employees out of 700 total. There’s absolutely no way they’re about to start paying the roughly 21,000 moderators that are active on a daily basis. The fact that they’re actively vilifying moderators as spoiled children wanting everything for free (gotta love that irony) really slams the door on any possibility of treating them with respect, let alone actual compensation for actually running the damn place.

That’s probably why YouTube has such a hair trigger on demonetizing, removing, and copyright striking videos.