I believe you should be able to post to Lemmy from the Pixelfed instance, rather than just posting a link to the post.
E.g., from Pixelfed, I believe you can just do something like post to @chat@lemmy.one and it will magically show up here, as being posted by your Pixelfed account.
But failing that, you can just use imgur or whatever other host you trust to host images.
In a perfect world, I think we'd all have access to something like IPFS and the image wouldn't have to live in one particular place.
If it helps you to visualize, one somewhat common/popular form of personal knowledgment management is a wiki.
Like Wikipedia, except it's personal (or for a small team).
You can keep track of references and also make notes about things, but it's also about connecting ideas together.
Just like on Wikipedia, you can have a page about, let's say LLMs, which includes all the software and approaches you've tried, results, sample snippets, references to repos, but as you're writing about what you've tried and what worked, you might also have links to other wiki pages, like programming languages, build tools, test tools, etc.
As you document more and build more knowledge, your articles all get meshed together in one well-organized network.
Ideally it should be easy to navigate if you come back to a technology later and need to get back up to speed.
Sadly most people CAN'T connect through dial-up, even if both parties have all the equipment.
A lot of telcos have redone their entire network in VoIP stuff (with heavy compression) which makes it hard to keep a connection even at 300.
If you're connecting from a modern computer, you just get a telnet client that does the appropriate code pages/ANSI/zmodem/etc.
If you're connecting from a real vintage computer, you get a little dongle that pretends to be a modem (and often accepts AT commands, including fake phone numbers), but secretly connects to WiFi and relays through a telnet connection.
Some BBSes do still have landlines, and there's the occasional ham radio BBS, but 99.999% of it is through IP-based telnet or ssh these days.
I have a similar kind of idea.
I think if it had been a free/open source/community project that made the headlines I would have been all like "this is so awesome".
I guess what I don't like is the economic system that makes that impractical.
In order to build one of those giant GPTs, you need tonnes of hardware (capital), so the community projects are always going to be playing catchup, and I think quite serious catchup in this arena.
So the economic system requires that instead of our posts going to a "collective hive mind" that aid human knowledge, they go to some walled garden owned by OpenAI, which filters and controls it for us, and gives us little bits of access to our own data, as long as we used it only in approved ways (i.e., ways that benefit them).
I hate when people use passive voice in these things.
It's such a slimy way to try and avoid responsibility.
"We have blocked you from using a mobile browser." is the active voice.
It includes a subject ("we") and a verb ("blocked").
It says that someone made a decision, executed that decision, and is responsible.
"It looks like ... ", " ... is currently unavailable" is so fucking weaselly and irresponsible.
You are 100% a complete piece of shit if you ever say something like that.
You are not responsible enough to handle a Wendy's drive-through order, let alone a large organization.
Are you thinking of it as a centralized replacement to YouTube?
If you're centralized, yeah, you probably need a data centre the size of Malta.
There are decentralized alternatives (like PeerTube) where the cost is also distributed.
If you're using PeerTube, you literally can "just throw it on a cheap VPS", and lots of people do, with no problems.
I think the real reason decentralized video isn't going to catch on is because video (and YouTube in particular) has not been a community thing for many years now.
There are very few YouTubers who make videos to build a community or connect to a community.
YouTubers are on there for money, and there's really no alternative that can both host the videos and pay out big cheques to content creators.
I don't have statistics to back this up, but I'd be willing to bet an entire doughnut that most reddit users have never posted even a single comment.
People with that level (dis)engagement aren't the type to seek out alternatives.
They just kind of drift away.
I believe you should be able to post to Lemmy from the Pixelfed instance, rather than just posting a link to the post. E.g., from Pixelfed, I believe you can just do something like post to @chat@lemmy.one and it will magically show up here, as being posted by your Pixelfed account.
But failing that, you can just use imgur or whatever other host you trust to host images.
In a perfect world, I think we'd all have access to something like IPFS and the image wouldn't have to live in one particular place.