I don‘t think it is a binary situation: Complete self sustainability vs. full dependence on large corporations. Rather it is a spectrum and everyone feels comfortable somewhere else on it. Also I don‘t think the ends really exist, as someone else will always have power over you (you can‘t reasonably maintain everything yourself) and you can always migrate/quit from a service. Over time your position might change. For me personally I think Tailscale is a great service and for someone just starting out I would definitely recommend it. I think a lot frustration can be avoided when you don‘t set your self-hosting goals to high at the beginning. You can always update your setup later on.

My opinion: Figuring monetization out while keeping most of your audience happy will be the most important step to be a viable alternative to YouTube. Big YouTubers like LinusTechTips, Corridor Digital or something like Nebula already have their own service, because it is worth it to have fewer people pay more. Sadly everyone of them develops their own solution which are not interoperable. Are you in the talks with anyone to migrate to PeerTube backend? I think this would be such a gamechanger.

This is really cool and I will definitely try it out! Am I missing something or is there really no contributors license agreement?

You want that if you strongly believe that your hate speech counts as free speech

In Germany the current government had the idea (but never follow through on it) to allow a married couple to form a new last name based on their last names. Funnily enough the article mentions that this meshing of names is already possible and getting more popular in the USA and Great Britain.

https://www.rnd.de/panorama/namensrechts-reform-kann-man-bald-zwei-nachnamen-vermischen-3AOXUKZP6VFV3IFKWBFLKWXBQY.html

Do you have a link?

Half life 1 also! May be the graphics are a bit dated, but for that is the Black Mesa verdion