This is unsurprising. They do this a lot with especially short usernames. I recently saw an interview with a German youtuber (@dima) where they talked about how youtube gave them this channel. In that case the channel still contained private videos and information of the previous owner, which I find somewhat shocking.

Easy fix: use youtube without a channel, e.g. using newpipe or yt-dlp.

It's a soft reminder of that

Precisely, and for a platform that markets itself as "your videos your platform" this is an important point to raise and remind folks of. Youtube is not yours or your friend. Avoid unless being paid, or deriving other value somehow.