Which you can't edit without deleting and reuploading, breaking links, view counts, etc, right?
Does youtube happen to still show ads on those videos but now just pocket all the income?
And AFAIK demonetize means no ads. The whole thing is a brand safety kick so it doesn’t really make much sense to “demonetize” and still show ads.
> Whoever makes them has totally lost their mind.
I don't think then problem is entirely YouTube per-se for some of the rules, it is the "people" who demand they do certain things a certain way. And by the "people", I mean (to lesser extent) us, the viewers; but mostly the advertisers, the mega-corps with deep pockets who want to be as far away as possible from everything that's not seen as sanitized humanity.
YouTube, then, like most capitalist entities, is merely incentivized to gravitate towards something, anything really, that will maximize their bottom line.
For instance, YouTube recently implemented a policy such that they now demonitize videos that contain profanity in the first 15 seconds - AND THIS APPLIES RETROACTIVELY TO VIDEOS RELEASED BEFORE THE POLICY WAS CHANGED.
Between that, the downvote count being removed, random demonetizations, mysterious channel shadowbans, the DMCA travesty, YouTube Rewind, and the "misinformation" rules, YouTube is a complete trash fire.
Nobody sane believes that the YouTube rules are reasonable.