> you don't really have much control over content you wish to upload

Well, if it's your creative output, or public domain content, you are very much in control over what you do with it.

You are not in control over the available channels to distribute content, though, and that's the big challenge.

YouTube was a game changer because it allowed you to upload and share video for free... in an era where bandwidth and storage were prohibitively expensive. Combine that with every digital device having a camera and a mic, and you see how that led to an explosion of audiovisual content over the past 15 years.

However... bandwidth and storage are still prohibitively expensive. If you'd put up an MP4 in HD quality on shared hosting or a VPS, and amassed a couple of tens of thousands of views over several hours, your host would be really quick to either shut you down, and/or invoice you for the bandwidth you used.

Of course, there's no free lunch. Someone needs to pay. Showing ads to viewers is YouTube's strategy to recoup the expenses. Sadly, that diminishes the value of the content and it makes me less and less interested in opening up YouTube and clicking through a couple of short clips.

Personally, I feel that it's up to content creators to pay for the privilege of getting hosted. In that regard, Vimeo's offering is interesting. [1] No advertising and more features depending on your plan.

[1] https://vimeo.com/upgrade

Of course, doing that will impact your audience. In that regard, Vimeo isn't a social platform like it started, it's now more a B2B video platform, used by professional videographers or businesses who create professional video content.

The last option is paying for YouTube Premium. But do I really want to pay 11.99$ a month for a massive library of relatively short clips of inconsistent quality produced by third parties the majority of whom don't receive a worthwhile reimbursement through monetization? In that regard, YouTube isn't Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime or DisneyPlus because of this huge quality problem.

Finally, the original proposition of YouTube - being able to share video without restrictions - is what made it attractive for both content creators and consumers in the first place. Much like many other outlets that first appeared on the Web in the early 00's and followed that basic principle: offering information for free.

> I think services are generally bad for consumers.

Ultimately, the bigger issue is that hosting content never was free to begin with. Either you set up your own hardware and hook it to the network, or you lease it from someone else in some form (Serverless, VPS, shared hosting,...).

The notion of "posting" content online has completely abstracted that away. The proposition of being able post and share content for "free" is what made billions flock to the Web. Of course, that's entirely unsustainable.

Putting up paywalls everywhere and trying to sell monthly subscriptions does have its limits. Between Spotify, Backblaze, Netflix, VPS hosting, Dropbox, several newspapers,... there are only so many subscriptions that one can conceivable deduct from a monthy paycheck.

In that regard, a reckoning might be due once the limits of these business models are reached.