Gabu

It's complicated. Essentially, YT spends 24 hours a day trying to dodge the fallout of stupid decisions taken during the previous 24 hours, ad infinitum. They were bashed for certain decisions related to 4k video (which used to be called 4k, then changed to 2160p, then back to 4k, then back to 2160p), leading to the current name scheme.

4k and high bitrate 1080p are actually the same thing.

For starters, cull the immense amount of duplicated content. Look for some random common word and sort by recent, you'll see thousands of channels from India, Pakistan and similar nations reposting the exact same videos. There's also an ungodly amount of spam. These two things alone would, I'd guess, cut down a good chunk of server costs. Another thing is optimizing bitrate, I often get served "1080p" content featuring little more than a static image while browsing in my 6" phone.

Bushido is Japanese, this joke doesn't work.

Even if we ignore what @prole wrote, in civilized countries you're allowed to break company policy if it infringes your rights, regardless of what a contract says.

which is common across all workplaces?

In your shithole country, maybe.