Are they hate speech? Not according to law

Only barely. This could easily qualify as inciting harassment in most European countries.

Publish things about Crowder... Make him look bad... You your access to a huge media network and you two have your spat....

This only really works if his audience would care about the dirt on Crowder.

Which they don't. They like the fact he's a homophobe.

a platform (not a publisher)

A platform that ... specifically promotes far-right content because it gets clicks?

A platform that tweaks their recommendation algorithms to censor certain types of content?

YouTube isn't a proper platform, get over it.