Does everything need to scale? I personally quite enjoyed the web back in the day where most communities were running on tiny boxes managed by a single hobbyist.

> you need a mod team to prevent runaway piracy and child porn.

Nebula doesn't because it's an invite-only platform. The creators are all part of an old-school social network and can vouch for each other.

> video delivery is not a cheap game, so i'm not really sure how free platforms will survive

So don't be a free platform! Nebula is doing just fine at serving me and many like me. Most of the creators I follow make a solid living on Patreon, with Nebula and YouTube ads just layered on top. The idea that every app must be free and must scale to ~every human being on the planet is killing the internet.