people say this every time, but it'd be fantastic if youtube actually had competition. if people could actually reasonably make the decision to go elsewhere then they'd have to think a lot harder about these things. i doubt there are youtube execs plotting deviously to take advantage of their helpless content creators, there's almost certainly some real reason why this was a good idea, but they just don't have to worry about any significant number of people leaving their service. it's a non-issue for them, so it isn't relevant.
best case scenario they reverse this, second-best they just don't enforce it seriously. also, apparently partners weren't even notified that these changes were coming either