Certainly they had trouble with certain genres of video. For instance clips where a little bomb drops out of a drone and falls on top of somebody. I think watching one of these is informative, as is seeing a T-80U cook off. But there is a 3-hour livestream that needs lots of content and they would show endless videos of the same plot.
I am a long time Youtube premium subscriber. Until now, I would also recommended Youtube premium to anyone I know. Even though I prefer to not use Google products where possible, the Youtube premium product is just too good.
During the last few months, a lot of the content I have seen on Youtube was from the newly demonetized channels. They even demonitzee Perun, which makes absolutely no sense.
For a long time, all the creators (not just Ukraine related) are having a very difficult time due to random "demonitization", blatantly wrong copyright strikes and other "AI" related shenanigans. But it looks like they more or less were able to continue using Youtube as a platform and even make a living doing that.
Now I will have much less of a reason to watch Youtube, as Ukraine related content is probaly at least half of what I watch. I am also extremely dissappointed with Google regarding their this decision to demonitize.
I hope this whole saga is a mistake that will be reversed by Google shortly. Otherwise, I will cancel my Youtube Premium subscription, and start using platoforms where I pay the creator directly (i.e. Patreon). I will probably be paying just a tad more than my monthly Youtube premium subscription. But my money will go directly to the creators I want to support.
Wild guess: because this conflict is really a cluster f*ck of disinformation. Better not allow making money out of this disinformation, well... that's what youtube did probably decide.
putin's regime is "supposed" to be finished in ua, the since-2014 conflict with its "neo-nazi"(...) azov bataillon is "supposely" gone. Now, they are trying crimea again, but it seems putin's regime "army" is getting a beating this time: I feel very uncomfortable, really, coze you know, nukes. Super conspiracy mode: putin's regime may be using now the conflict to purge some of its population sending them to be killed by the ukrainian army without the intent to keep the conquered territories, and no idea if the men who fled russia will be able to "go back safely".
Looks like some sort of update from ML algo?
People that i follow got demonetized (that i knew of) and a lot of theme were focused on economy of the war not rly war itself so probably some sort of auto-war demonetization.
What steams me is that this channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFUidKQ8v0RqAke2zbVDY_g
which is full of promotional videos for Russian arms exporters, still has ads. I just saw an ad for a U.S. Congressional candidate on that one.