I agree but it’s exceedingly rare that this is because of political reasons - usually, it’s because of music rights issues.

I guess it depends on how you define 'political'. Almost all censorship is related to politics in one way or another. The cycle is X minority is mad and gets a news article written and then there's a new wave of disappearances. Really anything at all controversial. Often it's something not child friendly, which ignores the mass of the internet that is also not taken down for this. If you have kids do you really want their content moderation farmed out to some megacorp?

youtube-dl is the only proof I have that some of my favorite content ever actually existed

For me it's the realization that I don't even know what I lost. I just have lists of dead URL's.

modern day Poe