A more likely future is less video rather than people move to PeerTube and shake an upturned hat for donations. Which doesn't bother me much, but is likely to invoke the FAFO gator on a lot of folks.
I would say less big budget video. If we're being honest, YouTube is essentially television at this point. Many YouTube views, maybe even most, don't go towards individual creators. They go to Studios and the Jimmy Kimmel's of the world.
If someone like boxxy is making videos with a potato cam on her bedroom floor, I don't think she necessarily cares much about the monetization.
That USED to be the entire draw and appeal of YouTube. Then monetization came and surprise! The platform changed to be more monetizable, i.e. watered down and corporate.
You mean I could get a f...ing text again about things, which I could just read at my own speed, skip back and forth by just moving my eyes, use the search function, skip pieces of it, etc etc, in just two minutes instead of ten minutes watching a video clip for the most trivial statements?
What a baaad world that would be...
Tone aside, we already do that... it's also monetized and being AI-slopified as we speak. Much faster than video.
in this scenario where videos become non-viable, people would ujst paywall their text like many journalists have resorted to. There's no free lunch these days.