The way I see it, youtube is the facebook/twitter of generalized video sharing. There isn't any other site that people use to the same degree.
Sure, one -could- host their own peertube instance for a community. However the discovery probability drops immensely. One of the main benefits of youtube (at least for me) is easily discovering new content/creators. Also, having high-quality videos in one central location versus multiple different sites for cooking videos, woodworking videos, etc. Having something like a global search across federated peertube instances could work though.
At that point you also run into the issue of who has the hardware to power these new communities? Few people have that sort of data storage available, and fewer still have enough powerful servers + cdns across the world. The new owners of an instance could easily just as well decide to censor whatever they want, and if I had to trust a random person over youtube I'd most likely choose youtube. At least it faces public scrutiny, etc.
Sure, one -could- host their own peertube instance for a community. However the discovery probability drops immensely. One of the main benefits of youtube (at least for me) is easily discovering new content/creators. Also, having high-quality videos in one central location versus multiple different sites for cooking videos, woodworking videos, etc. Having something like a global search across federated peertube instances could work though.
At that point you also run into the issue of who has the hardware to power these new communities? Few people have that sort of data storage available, and fewer still have enough powerful servers + cdns across the world. The new owners of an instance could easily just as well decide to censor whatever they want, and if I had to trust a random person over youtube I'd most likely choose youtube. At least it faces public scrutiny, etc.