Tbh as someone who wouldn't be in it for the money PeerTube seems awesome. And if you were in it for the money, imagine being like the first big channel on there? You'd probably really do well.

Do you understand what "barely" means? I didn't say no financial incentive, I said barely. And Youtube taking almost half of your ad revenue (which itself is pocket change unless you're a channel focused on investing, law, software development or real estate or you're a channel regularly making over 100k videos) is barely a financial incentive. People complain about Valve taking 30% from game sales and Youtube takes 45%.

But you are correct in the sense that you can still make decent money with Youtube ads. But to make worthwhile money you need to make videos in the niches advertisers like, target an audience advertisers like (almost exclusively English speaking audience) and make videos that make at least over 1k views (which instantly puts you in the top 10% of content creators). Or be in the top 1% of content creators and average over 100k views per video. If you're making something like gaming videos for 10k viewers Youtube pays you around $5 per video. At that point for the same video and viewers you're probably going to make more money from the Peertube donation button than Youtube ad revenue.

So no, I'm not lying.