if they do, I imagine they have MORE than enough money to be able to afford a CDN or S3
As long as they’re continuing to run ads or getting enough “subscriptions” to maintain it. I don’t think any twitch streamer, no matter how big an audience they have or how much money they have, would go live just to burn through their cash.
sadly it’s the point that everyone instantly comes up with WHY folks shouldn’t use Owncast.
Yeah, that’s not the argument I’m making. Again, I love the idea of owncast, for all the reasons you gave in your last paragraph, but mostly just to give people the option to not be dependent on a for-profit corporation. But like with youtube, tiktok, and other video-based social platforms, they’re costly to run and moderate, and thus difficult to federate. I’m just trying to understand where its practical limits are right now.
streams are just bunches of files
Are they? Very short lived files I guess? Because the delay on a twitch stream can be as low as a couple of seconds. Not sure about owncast.