Comment by t2r3121
4 hours ago
Peer to peer died because (1) a lot of the world, especially outside the US, has terrible upload/bandwidth, (2) HTTPS CDNs got _really_ cheap, far cheaper that p2p technologies like BitTorrent+WebSeed.
There are a minority of users who care about being able to host videos that violate YouTube/TikTok/Instagram policies. Unfortunately, a significant part of that minority is working with infringing or illegal content, which both prevents ad networks from working with you and attracts attention from law enforcement.
don't forget 3) mobile phones exist and 4) anyone watching PeerTube over BitTorrent is publishing their watch history to the Internet
Minor correction on (1): upload isn't worse "outside the US" as a rule. A lot of Western Europe (Portugal, Spain, France, the Nordics) has widespread FTTH with symmetric or near-symmetric plans, often better uplink than typical US cable. The weak-upload argument holds more for mobile-first regions and for DSL/cable-heavy markets. But I agree the conclusion probably stands either way: most viewing is on phones behind CGNAT, and that kills P2P regardless of how good home fibre is.
The CGNAT problem is solvable in the majority of cases via multiple solutions (tailcat/DERP, for example), but that certainly doesn't make a mobile connection's upload any better for sure.