Earlier quoted context omitted.
Creators don’t control where the audience is. If there was a credible alternative to the centralized services, then maybe more creators would try that. Nebula is one example where some of the more education-focused channels have been posting videos. Not sure if it’s been successful though.
I don't buy it. Creators make audiences, and platforms know this. Users have to take what they get, but producers have options. This is why YouTube hosts content for free, makes advertising and monetizing easy, works to lower the barriers to entry and make independence unnattractive. If creators switched to distributing through their own servers or a different CDN or IPFS or bittorrent or whatever, they would have to…
And from my experience, people overwhelmingly watch YouTube on phones or tablets, and wouldn’t be messing around with anything like BitTorrent. If you think that is a good alternative, then you are not representative of the average YouTube user.