Sure, I generally think of these projects as experiments to try to make this “store something permanently” vision happen in reality. Just because the vision has hurdles to overcome doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.
Arguably GitHub’s Arctic Code Vault aimed to do the same thing in a different way https://archiveprogram.github.com/.
I agree that the tail end support of bandwidth and storage costs for X years are obstacles for this vision but blockchains in their current form already incentivize keeping this data around and hosting the data as part of normal network operations. These projects are just trying to separate out the storage layer from the computation layer (which may be a folly, or may prove viable).
The point is that there’s groups of people trying to apply these new tools in novel ways to try to give humanity better tools in some capacity, and I think that’s a fine use of resources and effort.
Have you heard of the uncensorable library project? https://www.uncensoredlibrary.com/en it aims to make some data permanent and available even in the face of Chinese censorship. Is it a panacea that’s going to scale for all data forever? Of course not, but it’s a novel approach and an interesting experiment (and look ma, no blockchain!).
Similarly, there’s a lot of mythology about content not being censorable which falls apart as soon as you think about it. People still have to follow the law in their country: if you upload a Disney movie to IPFS, their lawyers will send takedowns to everyone hosting it. Just as with other P2P services, anyone using it will be deterred by the risk of your ISPs cutting your service if you don’t comply with legal requirements but unlike its more efficient and private alternatives these services are both public (making it easier to track users) and the blockchain services handily provide a signed statement for prosecutors, which seems unlikely to be a popular feature for anyone who actually needs it.
That’s the key difference between the early internet and “web3”: those early efforts were building things people outside of that community clearly wanted but the latter is what happened when people spent a decade pumping money into cryptocurrencies in the hopes of one day becoming rich and are now desperately searching around for reasons why everyone else should pay a premium for their random numbers. It never goes well when the conversation starts with what you’d like to sell someone rather than what they need.