Perhaps scale is actually a non-problem in many cases, and only a critical one in a paradigm where there is a need to have as much traffic as possible on a site

Perhaps scale is actually a non-problem in many cases, and only a critical one in a paradigm where there is a need to have as much traffic as possible on a site for profit reasons. A person who wants a place to talk about their cat doesn't actually need a global scale video platform, unless their cat organically goes viral and the site gets hugged to death. Most cat posters just need a given amount of heart emojis per post, that a rather small group of cat fanciers can actually manage without much problem. Similar dynamics apply to the vast majority of internet content. There might be a place for a big video platform in the post-free-money internet, where creators of (again, organically) viral content can shift network loads for a share of ad revenue or a modest fee. So while your dog is clearly bad mannered and mediocre, my dog is a goddam supermodel and he knows it and he's gonna be a star if I ever put a picture of him up. He would need YouTube for sure. My little songs and rants, nobody outside of a few friends and sidewalk passerby are ever gonna hear them and that's fine, so peertube is gonna do the job for me just fine. I think that one requires a certain kind of exposure-seeking, or else profit-seeking mindset in order to see what YouTube does as crucial. That's my take anyways.