I think there is some aggression here directed at me that comes from stuff other people in the thread have been throwing at you, so I have some understanding for the aggressive tone, even though I wonder why you are that emotionally invested, or at least, why your language seems to reflect that to that degree at this moment. I don't think we will be able to change each others' mind either way. But I feel like I should address at least a few points, where I think your estimations are at least off (again, not completely untrue):

No, my point is that there is no reason for a Content Creator to actually put effort into Peertube (or even the youtube alternatives that they aren’t co-owners of). And there is no path toward that.

Okay, that at least makes the context more understandable to me. And for the big ones, I still agree. For a lot of others, I think even now publishing on both can make genuine sense, it's surprisingly cheap, or even free utilising one of the many established instances, to have additional reach with a passionate and growing community. And I do think that with further growth, there is potnential for it to attract more than just people doing it "out of the goodness of their heart." And I do think it is not doomed to be a "fundamentally un-profitable platform". Even now, with just a few months running, I have a surprisingly large chunk of costs covered by donations already, which I did not expect.

People run seedboxes because they get something out of it: Private tracker access.

And people run PeerTube instances for a multitude of reasons. Some financed by donations, some out of pocket, some by non-profits. They get the same out of it, as any of the other big Fediverse instances, sometimes just community and pride, sometimes a genuine side job, some non-profits have employees having it as a main job, too.

I suspect you would think otherwise when a video “goes viral” and you suddenly get a call from your ISP telling you they have decided you are hosting a business and that you need to pay for a different internet plan.

Well, it wouldn't be my ISP, as it's not my home connection, but my server provider. But, point taken. So far, stress tests haven't yet produced the risk of what you are describing, to my knowledge. Might happen, might not, you seem to have experience, which I respect. But I also know that experience might not translate to different situations and dynamics properly at times, and I also respect the people in the broader PeerTube community running instances with their own experience also greater than my own not agreeing on that point as unambivalently.

Ah, so now content creators are working specifically to support Peertube. Which means their effective operating costs have just skyrocketed because now they are paying for their own hosting AND paying for all the time and materials to make the video in the first place.

Actually, you misunderstood what I meant here. What I meant was a large content creator just generating a growth in community for an instance, some of which will be supporting the instance on their own, with the content creator maybe also adding donations if they want to. Again, everything I have heard from the community currently active on PeerTube, some of which having been active for Years, indicates costs scale better than your estimate seems to indicate, including, again, from people more experienced than me, and with some exceptional videos already in the 100ks of views.

Great. I didn’t “disregard” anyone.

You kind of did with:

And people SAY they want early youtube videos but everyone is deeply spoiled by the difference between a video that was made in a week of after work tweaking versus weeks of full time planning and editing.

Maybe you did not mean it that way, but claiming "everyone" is a statement that disregards people you claim are not existing in "everyone". Speaking of disregarding:

But you have to understand that You Don’t Matter.

I mean, that's what I mean with, why do you seem so emotionally invested. What are you trying to do? Save us all from investing resources into PeerTube? Just end up "winning" this argument for winning's sake?

If creating content for a platform can’t even meaningfully offset the cost of creating that content in the first place, the VAST majority of people won’t and you are basically left with the independently wealthy people.

And people passionate about things, which is an important group. E.g. I am living on disability payments that are subsistence level (in a western European country, so it is overall okay, with some general frugality "life hacks" and cutting back on what others may think of as essential), yet I am investing a lot out of pocket into the Fediverse just because that is what I want to do. I am well aware I am not the average person, and not indicative of the vast, vast majority of people, but it is still another type of engaged person for platforms like that at this stage of development, that provide spaces and community already for PeerTube, that others grow within synergetically.

But more broadly, content is not created for PeerTube exclusively at this point of growth anyway, with only very rare exceptions, so almost no one is creating costs just for PeerTube right now. The question is of course - if PeerTube could generate 100ks or even eventually millions of views regularly with additional growth - would it be an attractive platform to put effort into? So, concerning some of the points you made there:

Peertube et al only really exist starting on step 4 (because you can bet most instance owners would strip or hijack those referral links…)

Not what I have seen actually happening with referral links for the channels that publish on both platforms and have them (e.g. Gardiner Bryant), so you speak of hypotheticals here, when there are already situations where this is not happening in this way. And there has been no drama, no flaming comments, no "boycott his instance" calls.

As for your 1 and 2 concerning the life-cycle of content creators, I do agree with it, but don't think skipping step 2 in itself is completely impossible with a different culture and community. Some things that have helped offset it for the few creators I know of exclusively publishing on PeerTube are things like their already existing Mastodon communities being able to very easily interact with their videos without having to change their favourite medium, as well as:

Get popular enough that you can get enough of a following that people actually WILL “just put some money in the tip jar”

My experience has been, that this is at least somewhat mitigated by there being an on average greater willingness on the Fediverse in general to support things via donations, again anecdotally, I was surprised that I got some so early on in my "fuck it, I'll just start hosting Fediverse stuff now out of pocket because I want to and I cut back on other stuff"-journey. At this point, not at all enough to carry anyone, but I never claimed PeerTube is able to that that on its own right now, just that the potential exists, IMO.

Your point is taken, and I agree - I also don't see anyone professionally publishing on PeerTube as their only platform any time soon, unless they have outside revenue (e.g. I have an art collective publishing their professional content on my instance for independence and conviction reasons, but their main revenue stream is of course their events themselves. Still, there is a degree of additional promotion they get for free for being part of PeerTube instead of just self hosting.)

But you did claim originally that there are no reasons at all for creators to care (which, granted, you did clarify and moved away from a maximalist position), and claimed it being fundamentally un-profitable to publish there without ads. You also suspected the devs being in risk of selling out and just creating this as a prestige project to do so - which is probably one reason you got backlash, because that betrays a lack of understanding for the project and team behind it. And you noted - "any video hosted only on a single 'instance' would rapidly cost way too much if it ever became moderately popular." - moderately popular is a fuzzy term, of course, but so far, this does not at all look to be the case in scaling stress tests and what I have seen of the actually existing infrastructure. E.g. I've seen some French videos getting several thousands of views in hours to a few days, running on what is listed as essentially a laptop at someones private home (which is of course the absolute cheapest tier of hardware employed), and those instances have managed to exist at that scale for years, indicating professional servers would scale up pretty well and can punch way above their weight class when compared to centralised services.

And I do think that even just right now, a few dozen to hundreds additional views from passionate people really interested in your content can be a huge boon to small to medium creators, and that is the status quo at the moment, with growing numbers, growing synergies (e.g. PeerTube being easily embedded in lemmy-ui is quite new) and growing projects to address discoverability (e.g. Sepia Search or the PeerTube Picks add-on) and already more professional exceptions going beyond just dozens of views (e.g. the aforementioned heise instance).

You clearly have a lot of professional and personal experience, that I do respect. The overall dynamics you describe are real - but I suspect you might at least lack some experience with the kind of structures that are currently being built in the broader Fediverse, as well as PeerTube in particular, including the use cases PeerTube already has. Case in point for the latter: The many hypotheticals you employ, which are sometimes, but still not always, accurate to what is an already existing community on PeerTube that has existed for years now.