In 2005, sure.

Its a bit more mysterious now a days though. Video compression got way better (albeit video quality also went way up), hard drives got way cheaper. Bandwidth is really cheap at scale. People are way better selling ads now then they used to be. A lot of video serving infrastructure got standardized.

Don't get me wrong, its still hard and expensive, but i don't feel that is the moat it once was. Network effects is also a whole other conversation.

> Bandwidth is really cheap at scale.

This is extremely false, where are you getting this information? Bandwidth is ludicrously expensive, no matter what your scale.

Why do you think Netflix gives ISPs server racks filled with the entire Netflix catalog, or Microsoft/Google/Meta spend billions on their own private submarine cables? Nobody would do that if bandwidth was cheap, but it isn't.

Why do you think every single streaming provider and platform does checks every so often to see if you're still watching? It's not because they are being nice; it's because it is costing them money, even the huge companies.

The problem is that video quality increased to meet availability.

In the past 480p would be okay. Now everyone wants 4k.

In fact, in the past IMAGES were normal. Imgur was an image website. Now everything is about short videos. Even memes are now videos.

I'm pretty sure if we make Internet faster and storage cheaper, we'll also invent a new sort of media to waste that speed and storage.