So, given AI is destroying YT, if you’re any sort of a creator at all, even if you just have some random posts from years ago that you uploaded with no intention of getting popular, you really should move your stuff to PeerTube, ideally on a self-hosted instance if you have the hardware to spare, while you still can, because things are only going to get worse for YT.
Even Odysee is a decent alternative if you want more traction, but PeerTube is more ideal as an alternative platform due to having the ability to self-host an instance there and have complete control of your content and presence down to owning the infrastructure you’re posting on.
I agree with you. I think many baskets is better than guessing that you’re exclusively picking the right basket. The key question is how you (and from here on I am referring to “you, as a creator” not “you, personally”) are allocating your effort across the many baskets. Even acknowledging that there are many baskets and options is a necessary starting point. If you are treating the options with lower population and lower views as second class citizens and just throwing your content up there too without any additional thought or attention that’s fair, given where they are right now, and at least it’s a step in the right direction, but you need to start thinking about the next step too. If you look at Peertube and see a waste of your time that has no future, you’re entitled to your opinion but I’d respectfully disagree. I think it pretty clearly is the future or at least a step towards it. If you think we’ll simply never escape Youtube, then by all means bend the knee to them and don’t waste your time anywhere else.
But remember that Youtube was new and disruptive once too and people said it could never succeed at what it was trying to do. And now that it’s succeeded, we think it could never fail, it’s too big to fail. Things don’t succeed until they do. Things don’t fail until they do. It doesn’t happen overnight, it happens gradually but if you realize things are shifting early, and spend your effort wisely in the places where your efforts will become most valuable, you’ll be ahead of the curve and in a really good position to maximize the benefit. Or by the time you realize it’s happening, you’re already falling behind and you’ll be scrambling to make the transition. And if you’re completely wrong and the alternative just quietly dies as they sometimes do, your effort is wasted but you’re otherwise not really any worse off than you already are.
Is any alternative video platform worth investing your time and effort in? Not based on what any of them are today, no. But based on what they will be? I think so. You have to think so too, if you want them to succeed. Will they succeed? Can Youtube ever fail? Only time, and you, each and every humble individual content creator, will decide.
Be the change you want to see in the world, don’t wait for it for it to happen to you.