According to that first link, it costs $6.1 billion to $11.7 billion annually to run YouTube. Even if you segment that into niche video communities, it’ll still cost hundreds of millions of dollars annually to host it, if you get a decent amount of traffic.
This is why YouTube is a monopoly. Because they have the ridiculous amount of money to throw at a “free” video hosting site. Any other video host would crumble under the weight of YouTube’s level of traffic. That’s also why some others, like Nebula, require a subscription model to function. Or any movie/TV show streaming service. They can’t afford to host that stuff for free.
This is also why Google is so obsessed with cracking down on anti-ad software. That’s how they make the money that pays for YouTube.
According to this, as of Jan 2024 there were 14 Billion videos on Yt. So effectively a dollar and change to host a video for all YT users.
Obviously it doesn’t work like that, but if the above commenter’s point was that I, a content creator, host my video and manage my own costs, and that video is linked via whatever federation, I can monetize and limit as needed as a creator, thus popular videos get paid to host, and unpopular videos are hosted for more or less table stakes because they’re only getting X hits per Month.
Some kind of WordPress-like container with a built-in safety switch for overages and - hey presto. Well, it’s a thought anyway.
I dunno, it seems do-able, even if the Great Unwashed are going to stick with YT and getting ads up the wazoo to see “I Stuffed My Face In A Fusion Reactor - Watch What Happens Next” and the like.
