Yeah I can appreciate that take mate. The level of audacity they would need to think something like this wouldn’t be noticed is almost unimaginable. Lying by omission does feel like the best comparison to make regarding this.
Rest easy friend; there will be plenty more corporate nonsense for us all to jawdrop over tomorrow!
If you give a letter to a postman, and the recipient asks why you put “P.S: I love you” on an official piece of documentation, your first thought wouldn’t be “that damn postman, opening my mail to try and enhance it”.
The same is true for YouTube. People have been uploading videos for decades with them ending up on the platform the way they are uploaded, so it stands to reason that longtime users would expect this behaviour to continue, especially if there have been no Comms around any changes.
Of course Google isn’t to be trusted, and anyone trusting YouTube to be ethical clearly isn’t paying attention to anything. But that doesn’t change the fact that youtube have intentionally hidden this change from their user base. Sure, the result was public facing, but the cause was kept secret; and that’s the nuance you’re overlooking.
Did you read the article? Your final sentence pretty much sums up what happened.