Also, since back when I last looked for youtube alternatives, many that seemed good turned out to use things like NFT and the sort, I feel compelled to ask:
Does it use technologies such as that, or are its instances just plain usual self-hosted sites?
Depends on in what way you're looking for a youtube alternative!
I think peertube might be fine if you're looking for a way to host your own videos, but it's propably not a good place to just browse for video content the way you might with youtube. I think the most solid alternative for that is Nebula. It costs like a dollar a month IIRC and has a couple big name video easayist kind of types. It doesn't really have anything to do with the fediverse or anything, but a majority of it is owned by the creators and from what I understand it is more generous per view than youtube, plus it has a buissiness model that doesn't rely on serving you adds and selling your data.
Iirc, Nebula is one of those NFT video hosting sites I found, so not much of an option. And regarding lack of contents, all social medias start like that, so I don't see it as a problem per se, since it can potentially still grow.