As someone who’s written in-browser player and transcoding/server code…the lemmy/mastodon etc. version of this can work, especially if flexible bitrate handling is baked into it (i.e., bitrate offer/acceptance matching over a protocol). You can get this down to YouTube interface + install some software + open a port on your firewall.
Also self-hosted video often has really shitty players.
So in other words this is a tech issue.
As someone who’s written in-browser player and transcoding/server code…the lemmy/mastodon etc. version of this can work, especially if flexible bitrate handling is baked into it (i.e., bitrate offer/acceptance matching over a protocol). You can get this down to YouTube interface + install some software + open a port on your firewall.
Tech issue, infrastructure issue, content issue, financial issue…
Hosting text like lemmy is several orders of magnitude cheaper than video.
And the reddit hug of death issue…