IMO a very small amount of storage should be free but after that the user needs to pay. It’s the right thing to do for hosts and for the environment. If content creators need massive amounts of video then that will incentivize them to make money on it.
The only people left out are small, niche channels that have quality or important content but don’t make much money. Maybe they could be cut special deals by the hosts / donors.
…And which big creator would choose to PAY instead of getting paid for uploading their videos (like it is, as of now)? I doubt this model would work at all, I don’t think anyone would want to join like that. Sure enough, youtube/tiktok/insta/whatever takes a chunk of the profits too, but at least content creators there can start from scratch and don’t have to invest in hosting first.
Big creators make a ton of money from their videos. I’m fine with the Fediverse adding ads, or creators doing sponsorships. We need a separation of concerns. Fediverse is removing centralized corporate control.
We need a way to get good content creators money on the Fediverse.
