That's completely fair. I have only see the same model for years - even aside from Youtube with a german-ran platform named Clipfish years ago. The rough idea was the same as what Youtube is.

Honestly, I do have to think on the "non-central algorythmn" part. Yes, a lot of what drives consumption on Youtube is based off that algorythmn. But it is based on knowing what actually is on the platform. So I wonder how an algorythmn would work in a network of dozens of individual "tiny platforms" (i.e. peertube instances or whatnot) and then generate recommendations based off that. Hm...