In nearly all of those cases, the content was removed because either the uploader wanted it removed, or the owner of the intellectual property in the video wanted it removed.
In both of those cases, I don't see how this is Youtube's fault or decentralized hosting would be better.
In the first case (uploader wants it gone) you have a sticky situation where loosely managed websites refuse (or can't) respond to requests to remove, which can start interfering with various laws in various places.
In the second case, where IP has been violated, those same loosely managed sites run significant legal risk of lawsuit by not responding.
From the perspective of a content owner or video creator, why would you want your work decentrally stored in places that you can't control it?
The other angles here have to do with monetization, too. When you use youtube, you can serve user aware ads and track who is watching your video as it spreads. If it is self-hosted, your content has been stolen and is enriching someone else illegally.
From a creators perspective I can't see how decentrally stored videos would be good.
Perhaps what we need is a Library of Congress type organization to begin a serious long-term archive of significant portions of this type of media.
I would agree with you if thousands of videos and accounts weren't removed daily due to false "intellectual property" claims and automated reporting. YouTube's system is terrible because they're so large that they've had to try to automate a system that can't really be automated. A decentralized system would require those claims to actually be validated before they're processed because, otherwise, it would be a waste of time and money for the companies making the false claims.
I agree with you on the Library of Congress. We need a digital LoC.
After thinking about it, a decentralized system of intellectual property theft would not work the way you think. The owners would stop contacting individual sites for individual confirmation and would send safe harbor / DMCA reports to the host who would nuke the content without spending ten seconds on it to preserve their business.
The only sites safe would be those self-hosting, and those wouldn't be able to serve a lot of bandwidth without having the means to be sued.
Even in that case, you'd have to deal with every hosting provider which, at the very least, would require an actual legal DMCA request rather than an automated one and, since people would be able to self-host, a way to contact their ISP who would have to verify that the claim and request are even valid. With YouTube, the automation is what's killing content creators and the archival value of the platform.
In both of those cases, I don't see how this is Youtube's fault or decentralized hosting would be better.
In the first case (uploader wants it gone) you have a sticky situation where loosely managed websites refuse (or can't) respond to requests to remove, which can start interfering with various laws in various places.
In the second case, where IP has been violated, those same loosely managed sites run significant legal risk of lawsuit by not responding.
From the perspective of a content owner or video creator, why would you want your work decentrally stored in places that you can't control it?
The other angles here have to do with monetization, too. When you use youtube, you can serve user aware ads and track who is watching your video as it spreads. If it is self-hosted, your content has been stolen and is enriching someone else illegally.
From a creators perspective I can't see how decentrally stored videos would be good.
Perhaps what we need is a Library of Congress type organization to begin a serious long-term archive of significant portions of this type of media.