YouTube is running an experiment asking some users to disable their ad blockers or pay for a premium subscription, or they will not be allowed to watch videos.
Peertube is federated. It seems to work similarly to Lemmy. I went on a random instance and clicked “discover” and noticed that I see videos from other instances. So at least the hosting cost is distributed across instances.
The other issue then is the bandwidth. Peertube uses p2p among viewers, so if there are many viewers at the same time they can take a significant load off from the server. Instances can also cache each other’s videos to split the bandwidth cost between them.
I think these design decisions means that it is possibly viable, though it is definitely way more expensive than non-video federated communities.
Peertube is federated. It seems to work similarly to Lemmy. I went on a random instance and clicked “discover” and noticed that I see videos from other instances. So at least the hosting cost is distributed across instances.
The other issue then is the bandwidth. Peertube uses p2p among viewers, so if there are many viewers at the same time they can take a significant load off from the server. Instances can also cache each other’s videos to split the bandwidth cost between them.
I think these design decisions means that it is possibly viable, though it is definitely way more expensive than non-video federated communities.