There is Peertube which is part of the Fediverse, where multiple instances each with their own policies exist. You can have an account on an instance and still discover/follow content on other instances (if they were not banned by your instance owner)

To me this seems like a good middle ground between having your own website and relying on a monopolistic service. Downside still is that your identity is fixed to an instance, but there are discussions on how to change that.