I think the only real path forward is for a developer to figure out a way to decentralize video hosting

That's what Peertube is all about. It's like the Lemmy version of Youtube. And it seems to have real funding and development mojo.

I think ipfs was supposed to be this but got bogged down in crypto shit. My memory is spotty on this tho

I wish Piped and Invidious were federated. It would make it so much harder to block.

If one instance gets blocked it could just pull video from another instance. Combine this with some sort of caching system and you would be golden.

In an ideal world, creators would accept that only 10% of their viewers would contribute to them monetarily

Agreed.

(through patreon or donations)

and then you lapse into using "patreon" as if it's a generic noun!

Not your intention I know, but this kind of corporate capture of minds has to end somehow.

Yeah we need developments like this but I guess that also goes hand in hand with educating people and empowering people, especially those that usually fall under the radar. You know, instead of just helping someone (say, elderly people or your little sister) out with their PC, actually taking the time and explaining how things work, the issues at hand etc.

We need people to have not just a better understanding of the tech they use in general but also and primarily about solutions on how to publish whatever content they produce themselves. It should be norm that people don't rely on somebody else for sharing pics, music, videos whatever it is. You could go as far as to also say this about messaging and whatnot. Unfortunately we are far from that and the last decade(s) amd their media have made it all so convenient for most of us.

Besides the fact that technologies have their history and their infrastructure has always been to build 'for the masses', so this actually a huge step to make a u-turn now, thinking about decentralizing basically all that came out of years, decades of refining and building businesses by white males and whatever capitalist institutions they belonged to.

Agree, probably the majority of content creators won't be able to earn enough money in such a decentralized/subsciption-based model, at least not enough to make a living. Then it's more a question of how many people actually love doing this stuff enough they continue to fight for it (again). I'm not sure if this trend we've been seeing of super-rich or super-famous creators is kinda an illusion at this point for most that pursue this path currently, maybe it feels more like a trend of us watching each other entertain us while a few human slaves take care of providing the stuff we actually need, like food. On the other hand it's just... well, made possible by this exact industry and connected business practices we're critisizing here.

This industry exists for a reason, and maybe we should start loking there for solutions as well. We as a society just keep feeding this machine, and I don't think it's even possible to exclude Foss folks even if we try to avoid it or try to find our ways around certain technologies. It's the mindset of consumerism, of being able to watch free content that we are conditioned to consume - plus kinda that greedy selfish habits we got into over the years, exploiting other people's labour that can be similarily applied in the same context and for most other aspects of our lives as well - and that are so prevalent in our everyday lives, to a point it's shocking to just watch humanity exist.

There's something deeply wrong with humanity, and I don't think we will be able to solve any 'smaller' issues if we can't solve the bigger picture.

If you think about it, it goes deeper into society as a whole and capitalism etc. We kinda lost that feeling of being content. instead crossing the lines of wanting more and more on a daily basis, at the same time losing that deep human connection with every minute we spend isolated clinging to our devices instead. we are monsters. idk theres so much more to all of this. I'm rambling at this point and lost the plot.

One can only hope things change but we surely won't move forward by just watching and doing nothing, especially not by avoiding that look in the mirror. At least thats what I figured for myself.

People roll their eyes constantly bc it's kinda the only topic I talk about but it's too important to not do it. I feel like as a millenial, its kind of my duty, as probably the biggest mistake our generation has done so far was to stay silent for way too long.

There have also been a few people extremely thankful for sharing a bit of knowledge here and there, and I don't even consider myself as tech-savy. that's what keeps me going.

cheap as hell

Is it really? For hosting your content, sure. But once you stand up a public instance, I can imagine storage costs would climb pretty quickly.