Scaling things almost always makes things more efficient. Cooling a data center that does the work of a million desktop is going to use less energy to cool it than those million desktops.

But, peertube won’t ever be a replacement. Most youtube creators do what they do for money. Peertube isn’t the platform for that, and I’m not convinced the storage and hosting requirements will really ever be a proper replacement for youtube. What youtube does is much more expensive than what reddit or twitter do.

There is now though. So why not federate again?

Well, #1 is kind of impossible now. Different people can have the same ID on different instances.

#2, unless they really want to just be their own separate community completely, like an entirely different website, then yeah of course. That’s the point. Regarding the current major defederation, my understanding is that this not meant to be permanent and is a different situation. It’s a workaround basically.