This is why I expect the video side of things to be more on the level of stream channels that self-host content with subscriptions for access to VoDs, rather than singular big platforms. Streaming in of itself is a lot of traffic too, but you have much bigger RoI per bandwidth spent with live viewers, and you cut down the storage requirements with limited VoD access too.
The only problem then becomes discovering these channels from the rest of the federated space, but honestly, either that will be a problem that will be solved by the space in a more general manner (oooh, imagine the return of web rings! Lol) or… It will end up being an issue that doesn’t matter. Like right now, still coming from video games, MinnMax and Second Wind are two creator-owned platforms that appear to be relatively unpopular, with short amount of thousands of views, except they run off of donations on Patreons and the viewers they do have keep them afloat with a good decent margin.
I don’t agree with this network access take. A lot of endangered cultures are simply being assimilated.
I was in a casual quiz in Hong Kong recently and one of the questions required us to know a language with less than 100 speakers. The default answer the quizzers had expected was Macanese Patuá. That sort of regional dialect existed in such a restricted set of conditions and between two different pressures to remove it (between Cantonese and Portuguese), that globalization simply drowned it out.