YouTube is a very popular communications medium to recruit jihadis and to distribute news of the jihad. Here’s a few examples:
1. Equip a Fighter This Ramadan
2. Jihadi Attack on Ship in Suez Canal
3. Execution of Syrians in Town Square by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (al Qaeda in Iraq)
4. Khost CIA Suicide Bomber is on Tape with Leader of Taliban in Pakistan
Hakeemullah Mehsud (left), the Leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, and Humam Khalil Muhammed Abu Mulal al Balawi (right), the suicide bomber who carried out the attack at Combat Outpost Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan that was a plot point in Zero Dark Thirty. Here’s a link to the video but you’ll see that it’s been made “private” courtesy of YouTube.
5. Armstrong and Miller Martyrdom Video
and on a lighter note…
The Trichordist 
The way YouTube compensates musicians sucks in every conceivable way and must be changed — no doubt.
But I still believe in the First Amendment, and if these assholes want to stand up on a soapbox and rant, I defend their right to do so, no matter how heinous the content, and even if the soapbox is online. (Having said that, it’s pretty amazing that this stuff is allowed to stay on the site when a hundred other pieces of user-owned content are pulled by YouTube as “inappropriate.”)
Seeing stuff from the Jihadi’s reminds me of whenever I see someone from the Klan being interviewed. The more they talk the dumber they sound, so I encourage them to rave on — the Free Marketplace of Ideas and all that stuff. (I used to live next door to a Klan member in NC, and between my neighbor and his two friends they were just shy of a hundred IQ points total, so when they started talking about being part of The Master Race…)
I see three big things wrong with YouTube. You identified one, the sheer randomness of whatever “standard” they apply to taking down videos. Personally, I think they apply the typical Google standard, which is leave it up until you get caught by the wrong people and sell as much advertising as you can in the meantime. If you look down in the comments of some of these videos, you will see recruitment occurring as like minded racists and jihadis find each other online.
Artists who support Google like those performing on the YouTube awards would never associate themselves with a television network that promoted racism or misogyny, not to mention beheading videos. Either they don’t know any better or somehow suspend their beliefs long enough to allow themselves to take Google’s money, i.e., to take the king’s shilling. These artists could use their platform to condemn YouTube’s bad practices–like artists have done on so many occasions.
But the most important point to me is that it is clear that YouTube has no intention whatsoever of imposing standards and practices on itself and has every intention of monetizing really awful stuff while competing with television for access to the homes of millions who are probably oblivious to the evil side of YouTube.
If YouTube never imposes standards on itself, they will always find that steroid users want to know how to score illegal drugs and shoot up, jihadis want to recruit more terrorists, and holocaust deniers want an audience. All of these videos promote activity that is illegal somewhere in the world, except on YouTube.
If the government is going to impose standards on television networks that Google thinks they have already defeated, then the same standards should be imposed on YouTube. I realize that Google’s lobbying clout makes this unlikely. But artists don’t have to allow themselves to be used to promote evil, and neither does Geico, National Geographic, Shell Oil, or Goodrich all of whom by ads from Google that monetize evil.