All they need that I see is missing, is a way to discover / search everyone from any instance. Like, a consolidated / federated search.

Seems like its already happening.

Yeah, for at least 6 months.

Not precisely what you're after but
https://sepiasearch.org/

Now you'll actually get a pop-up claiming "click here to find out why" in regards to the slowness.

So you prefer ad supported content?

Who pays for the servers? Because if even big platforms like Signal sometimes struggle to pay the bills, in part because they spend a lot on their servers, then it’ll be dozens of times worse with video hosting

There exists a massive, global network of websites that are all easily searchable through various means.

I look up and view similar topics to you and never use YouTube for them.

Try searching the internet as a whole!

"I want endless curated content for FREE! NO ADS. NO PAY. ONLY CONTENT."

This guy, probably.

Probably also thinks the minimum wage is theft.

Content creators. It's hard to host everyone's videos, and it benefits monopolists to imply that doing so is necessary, as it prevents new entrants. It's not nearly as hard to host your own server (or pay for it to be hosted). It becomes harder when you suddenly become popular, a situation which Peertube explicitly compensates for by sharing the distribution effort between viewers, which scales with popularity.

Signal makes it's own bed like YouTube by being a single centralised server for everyone. Nobody ever asks "who pays for the servers" when it comes to Matrix or XMPP

I've gotten that before too

so you'd pay if there was a free trial?

Uh, it's called a "library".

You clearly have absolutely no idea what infrastructure costs to run.

Reddit and Discord killed that, sorry, the Internet you're referring to is dying and almost dead.

Lol, OK.

That would be an improvement, how would I know I want anything in a store I have to pay before I even consume anything?

I have several subscriptions ditectly to people making things I like.

On the otherhand, I miss when people made things because they liked to. I still do that. I run several sites that has no ads, no charge, because I like the communities I am sharing with.

Then again, it's not my job so I am afforded that luxury I guess.

It also might be worth saying that watching people do things is not my favorite thing. I would rather actually do things.

Not exactly, but pretty damned close!

It is now a shortcut on my desktop!

Thanks for proving my point.