Because 10K total public views is a vanity metric and people can just pump out total crap to get there. This to prevent a spam account from stealing content and

Because 10K total public views is a vanity metric and people can just pump out total crap to get there. This to prevent a spam account from stealing content and monetizing immediately with external links vs. the grind of maximizing your view count. Last I heard 1 million views is about $2,000 in ad dollars from Google. Google has made it unfavorable to compensate based off of view count because there is so much inventory. So the only real way for creators to sustain are platforms like Patreon, selling merch, sponsored posts, or referral links base off of CPA. From what the article states, this prevents illegitimate accounts from siphoning from OPs. If YT really wanted to keep the bar high in terms of quality creators they would base it off of number of subscribers and the level of engagement that those subscribers watch another video vs. a one hit wonder that goes viral.