fyi, the way you write seems like you are upset over something. It's somewhat odd to write that on a website that is hosted by volunteers on a shoestring budget for thousands of users "against the onslaught on the net." So you better understand, anything besides youtube videos (i.e., the majority of the content on the net) is fairly economical to host. Of course it depends on the system, but a small group can easily stand up something dynamic like a lemmy instance, and an individual can host their static blog for basically free -open to the wide internet. Youtube is hard because video uses an incredible amount of bandwidth. Google looses money on it, despite it being plastered with advertising. So even capitalism hasn't figured out how to do it yet without being subsidized by another revenue stream.