I wonder how that would work. My understanding is running a video site is extremely expensive. Transcoding compute, massive amount of storage, etc. Sure, a few small ones could exist, but enough to replace even a fraction of YouTube's userbase? I just don't see how the math works out. I mean, text-based Lemmy and Kbin had slowdowns/outages for months with just tens of thousand of users...

And that's to say nothing of the copyright hurdles. Imagine people who don't own the original videos start replicating content from YouTube -> fediverse-style video sites. The lawsuits would crush the new platforms to dust.

Believe me, I'd love to see competition. YouTube has had too much power for too long. It sucks how they treat their content creators, and even their users to some degree. But just like how no one up and starts a new electric power company, there's a reason big players are entrenched: MASSIVE startup costs.