Funny that I see this while searching for this story here: https://ymcinema.com/2022/03/17/vimeo-we-are-a-b2b-solution-...

It makes sense. Without ad revenue or premium subscriptions, there's no viable way to pay for creators in the say way a proper "indie youtube". In addition, many creators who post on Vimeo very much did not want their content to be publicly viewable. That was a feature.