YouTube’s decision to keep things G-rated is understandable. Advertisers have been jittery about the platform since revelations last year that YouTube’s algorithms placed some ads next to extremist, racist content and hate speech. That led several large advertisers to pull their ads from YouTube. YouTube then tightened its monetization rules, limiting which videos could earn money through advertising and prompting another conflict with creators, who called it “the adpocalypse.”

It’s also natural that YouTube would avoid promoting some of its more controversial creators. Mr. Paul, who has 18 million subscribers and is one of the best-known personalities on YouTube, spent much of the year making amends for an ill-advised stunt in which he filmed a dead body hanging from a tree in a Japanese “suicide forest.” Mr. Kjellberg, who has more than 76 million subscribers, has repeatedly been criticized for his on-camera behavior, including making Nazi jokes and praising anti-Semitic YouTube channels.

Drama between YouTube and its creators is nothing new. But the Rewind controversy is indicative of a larger issue at YouTube, which is trying to promote itself as a bastion of cool, inclusive creativity while being accused of radicalizing a generation of young people by pushing them toward increasingly extreme content, and allowing reactionary cranks and conspiracy theorists to dominate its platform.

YouTube’s efforts are complicated by the fact that it does, in fact, have many diverse and interesting creators making compelling videos. But those voices have struggled, at times, to be heard above the roar of the site’s most incendiary figures. There is no mention in YouTube Rewind of Alex Jones, the founder of the conspiracy-theory site Infowars, who built a YouTube empire with millions of subscribers and generated more than 1.6 billion views. There was no mention of the group of political YouTubers who make up what Rebecca Lewis at the Data & Society Research Institute has called YouTube’s “alternative influence network,” an influential cohort of video creators who have used their platforms to promote ideas from the right-wing fringes.

YouTube has taken admirable steps in the past year to clean up its platform. This summer, it barred Alex Jones and Infowars for hate speech, and it has tried to keep conspiracy theory videos out of searches for “trending” videos after breaking news events.

But people like Mr. Kjellberg and Mr. Paul — stars who rose to prominence through YouTube, and still garner tens of millions of views every month — remain in a kind of dysfunctional relationship with the platform. YouTube doesn’t want to endorse their behavior in its official promotions, but it doesn’t want to alienate their large, passionate audiences, either. And since no other platform can rival the large audiences and earning potential YouTube gives these creators, they are stuck in a kind of unhappy purgatory — making aggrieved videos about how badly YouTube has wronged them, while also tiptoeing to avoid crossing any lines that might get them barred, or prevent them from making money from their videos.