It's hard to argue that they don't have a monopoly. I think the best thing to happen would be to break up both Google and Youtube, turn it into smaller alternatives that need to factor their appeal to users again.
I'm old enough to remember when none of this stuff existed. I have a threshold Beyond which I simply stop using the service.
I'm actually pretty close to my lifestyle from before 1995. I don't have any cable I have basic internet I don't do any of the Music Services. Video-wise I only have Prime and any free services I can get on Chromecast for TV. I'm getting close to my threshold with prime, as the annual fee is getting real high.
I'm already starting to lose interest in most YouTube channels. It's not so bad here, really. I get to experience reality more.
Smart content creators have been setting up websites, Patreons, merchandise shops, and all they need to jump ship when YouTube finally capsizes. The likely/easy/inexpensive alternative for content creators, is PeerTube.
Half of the videos they recommend to me are things I've already watched. Sometimes there'll just be blank slots like they couldn't find any content to recommend. It's so shit now.
I seriously wish Patreon would improve the UI because I can see that being where I get my videos. Until then, Nebula is where most of my favorite creators are flocking.
Tempted to looking in to self hosting video content, it’s a real storage hog, but if compressed, I imagine some of the mid sized youtube channels could afford to do so, the real shame will be the difficulty for smaller creators to get discovered without a common platform.
The problem isn’t storing it, it’s hosting and delivering content.
YouTube, Netflix, and all the other big streaming platforms have huge amounts of servers around the world delivering content with minimal latency and without saturating the Internet exchanges with gigantic amounts of data traffic.
If we were to do this peer-2-peer people would have to get used to waiting for pages and videos to load again.
So long as the video runs continuously once the page loads, I’m not particularly bothered by latency. Admittedly I’m not everyone, but I think most people care more about the content than the UX. I mean, hell, YouTube has a pretty miserable UX in different ways, not from lack skill on the part of the people who make and maintain it or limitations of technology, but from the poor cooperate incentives and goals that govern it.