Also, since back when I last looked for youtube alternatives, many that seemed good turned out to use things like NFT and the sort, I feel compelled to ask:
Does it use technologies such as that, or are its instances just plain usual self-hosted sites?
All social medias start slow, unless you have a parent company to vouch for you, e.g. Threads with Facebook, so the current population doesn’t sound like a major issue. And Odysee was one of those NFT platforms I found.