This is what I've had to do. I got my channel banned from YouTube despite never getting a strike, and only one warning. Admittedly some of my videos can be a bit provocative but nothing too bad, and many not even that. When they've been flagged before I had appealed and gotten them reapproved, so I was under the impression that I was following the community guidelines appropriately. A sudden ban was unexpected.

Worse though is that banning your channel actually disables your entire YouTube account so I can't even watch YouTube with that account now! Not to mention playlists being gone, though I was able to get data from Google Takeout. That part was the most frustrating for me. I was even a premium subscriber!

And I've made videos for other people that have been around for years that I can't reupload due to the terms of the ban, which is also disheartening. I had started working under a different name before all this for much more artistic and abstract work, at the demand of the people I was working with, which now makes a lot more sense why they were pushing for that. I'm still uncertain if "me" being banned is all my personas or just the one that was banned; there are no obvious connections between them though.

Anyway, self hosting isn't too bad, though certainly need to ensure your hosting is capped so you don't get a giant bill if there is a sudden influx of viewers.

Thankfully I have enough donations to keep running with only a small amount I have to pay to cover the difference. Hopefully I don't have to end up using ads.

However the notable takeaway from all this is that there is no real competitor to YouTube! Nothing even comes close.