I use freetube as well, but I have a feeling that it's just a matter of time before google brings the axe down on it too, especially if it increases in popularity.
Well FreeTube never claimed to be a platform, it's a fantastic front-end for browsing YouTube videos without having to deal with Google's crap, but you're still using YouTube.
I don’t know what happens if a significant amount of yt users used freetube. but that probably won’t happen.
Look at what happened with Nitter (alternative Twitter frontend). They'll start changing around things so often that alternative frontends break every few days.
Dan Clancy has already said that Twitch isn't profitable as it is. Right now, they basically only still exist because of existing contracts, otherwise Amazon would've likely pulled the plug a while ago. They can't handle their current user base; they wouldn't be able to handle YouTube refugees en masse.
They currently allow unlimited vods that are hours long that provides zero revenue. They could disable that and instead allow 30 minutes of edited vods or video uploads and have ads on them to make money
Yeah that's true, and I'm honestly surprised that they've had features like that available for free for as long as they have.
I kind of wonder why they haven't attempted such a pivot already, though, as it seems like they could easily take over the gaming video space that YouTube currently dominates. Much of that audience uses Twitch already and would easily transition over to a more curated platform, so it feels like it should've been a pretty obvious move by now.
I just want to point out that DailyMotion and Vimeo still (somehow) exist.
I haven't really looked into them because they obviously my subscriptions wouldn't be there which is pretty much all I use youtube for, but they are technically competitors that do technically exist.
My main issue with Peertube is that for some reason, after just a bit of its use the internet connection on my laptop just shuts down until a reboot. It was present on both old and new laptop, and while the same thing happens when I torrent sometimes - only Peertube does it consistently. Would really like if there is a fix for this.
But yea, I agree in that the answer is not a platform, but a selfhostable solution.