YouTube, the company, will be fine. They'll just ban any content that triggers their enforcement systems. I'm worried about YouTube, the platform, and the bastion of free exchange of information and ideas that is has been until now. A response-type video or movie review will almost certainly be false-flagged by a system like this.

Of course, I agree with you that independent platforms are going to have a rough time. They either have to manually review all content themselves, not allow any user-uploaded content, or pay a company to do this for them.

What about distributed systems without central control? Will the new laws force them to introduce filtering into the software (which could e.g. be open source and forkable by anyone)? Or does this only apply to systems with a centralized repository?

I'm curious how this is supposed to work.

This is wrong. Small and micro platforms are excluded from directive’s scope.

Source from legislation: In particular, small and micro enterprises as defined in Title I of the Annex to Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC, should be expected to be subject to less burdensome obligations than larger service providers. Therefore, taking into account the state of the art and the availability of technologies and their costs, in specific cases it may not be proportionate to expect small and micro enterprises to apply preventive measures and that therefore in such cases these enterprises should only be expected to expeditiously remove specific unauthorised works and other subject matter upon notification by rightholders.

Yes, the Googles and Facebooks of the future will be affected the most.

This is consolidation of power, finally locking down the Free Internet just as we've done with every other industry. Stripping the power to change from the small.

And what are we doing about it?