YouTube premium perfectly showcases why ads dominate the internet, because even when there is a paid option for a service much cheaper than any alternative, people do not want to pay (And I am not talking about too broke to pay cases). Serving an infinite video catalog is very expensive in terms of all resources (And yes Netflix is not comparable, unlike YouTube, Netflix can highly leverage cache boxes at ISPs). Vimeo is one alternative for video hosting, and HN is surely not gonna like that model (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28547578).
So what is the alternative? (Peer to Peer for streaming doesn't seem a reasonable alternative at any scale, since most people own phones and then laptops, and much fewer desktops).
So what is the alternative? (Peer to Peer for streaming doesn't seem a reasonable alternative at any scale, since most people own phones and then laptops, and much fewer desktops).