lemmy also supports rss! your inbox can generate a rss feed. Also communities have feeds that update whenever someone posts on them. For example for c/technology sorted after active: https://lemmy.world/feeds/c/technology.xml?sort=Active
I guess to get actual value from these videos you will still need to visit youtube.com though, in the end giving them valuable data to analyze.
Bad actors might only feed on such a networks without seeding, so you will need some kind of good actor reward in your proposed system.
this sounds like decentralized anon network to me, like i2p… but with access to the clearnet. https://geti2p.net/en/
In the long term a switch wood be good, yes. But I am impressed by youtubes ability to load 10+ year old videos without problems, and I am afraid this is only possible because of their immense scale.
I use it quite often. Chills the eyes when reading. Standardized font(size) and design make this bearable.