I recently left Google having worked on a number of projects with various YouTube teams. I think I can explain why it's being handled this way by YouTube.
This is a fairly nuanced/involved issue, so the task of classifying the bug likely made it's way to one of the engineers responsible for the implementation of this feature.
That engineer has already launched this project, and filed it away under their GRAD (performance) artifacts for when promo/annual review talks roll around. There's no motivation for this engineer to waste time fixing this bug because it won't benefit their promo packet, and they are already being put under pressure to launch other projects which _will_ benefit their promo packet.
So they do what they can to sweep it under the rug because that's what the promo/annual review framework (GRAD) incentivizes and rewards.
This is a fairly nuanced/involved issue, so the task of classifying the bug likely made it's way to one of the engineers responsible for the implementation of this feature.
That engineer has already launched this project, and filed it away under their GRAD (performance) artifacts for when promo/annual review talks roll around. There's no motivation for this engineer to waste time fixing this bug because it won't benefit their promo packet, and they are already being put under pressure to launch other projects which _will_ benefit their promo packet.
So they do what they can to sweep it under the rug because that's what the promo/annual review framework (GRAD) incentivizes and rewards.