To be fair, YouTube is under no obligation to some greater good; it's just a video hosting service. Expecting it to "preserve footage" and any footage at that, is a strange expectation.
Guess they need to change to "information that we and our advertisers agree with."
Yes, I know they are different companies under Alphabet but it doesn't matter. Google has become a monster and too big, powerful.
It's just marketing. If you really want to see what the actual "mission" is read the TOS. Google,Facebook,Twitter and co like to boast about their humanitarian and humanist stance, the Apple way, when it comes to their relationship with their users but that's all a lie. The moment the need of their users doesn't match their financial interest all bets are off. The shit-storm triggered by a few outraged online publications and announcers a few month ago is a demonstration of that fact.
Independence and freedom of speech online has a price and "users" are going to find it out the hardway when Google refuses to host their content for political reasons.
People already forgot, that the tech to share content online already exists, it's called RSS and Google,Twitter,Facebook and co want it to go away.
Eeeeeeeeeeh....I don't know about that.
Lots of corporations today target "owning" a certain aspect of humanity. Facebook "owns social", Google "owns search", and LinkedIn is having a jolly good swing at "owning recruitment". Youtube wanted to "own video" and by and large it has succeeded. I'm not sure they get to have that position consequence free though.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that companies that manage to pin an entire market implicitly take on a social responsibility, and lots of them are not shouldering it appropriately.
If you film people getting shot at in a demonstration and want to get the word out, chances are you use a popular social network. You might not have any further knowledge, or not be able to (imprisoned, fleeing, dead, like the majority of Syrians) put the video elsewhere.