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.

> but my user handle is gone.

Did you ever have it? When they introduced handles you had to specifically claim that name, otherwise you get @(name)-(random), it doesn't matter if you had /Switzerland as a channel url.

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.

…they obviously care, hence the post

plenty of other people would care, too.

You cared enough to respond.