Yep, this is already a solved problem via torrents. All that's needed is a site (like lemmy or something else) to host the links, and help with content discovery.

Nebula could be a good case study in how well this would work. The content on there is of exceptional quality. To be honest, though, that's not always what I'm looking for. Sometimes I just want a bunch of garbage rather than a little high quality content. The big social media platforms put a bunch of it in one place. I know it's not really a good thing, but sometimes I just need background noise while I do other shit and random YouTube videos really does it for me.

I can't seem to find any data on how much of Nebula's revenue is actually due to the Curiosity stream tie-in, but I know even I was wary of the $5/mo subscription without the CuriosityStream sub to sweeten the deal. So maybe even the world's largest creator-owned streaming platform needed that investment.