I'm building a video streaming platform for a niched audience. It's basically YouTube with a fence around it. Users are vetted based on quite strict criteria so content will be high quality and relevant. I've been using Firebase to store the videos, but I soon realized this will become very costly in the end and since it's gonna be free and monetized through ads (not video ads), I will probably never see an upside. So I had an idea of using YouTube's API to basically upload videos to one account and stream them through unlisted links directly onto my platform.
There are a few issues with this however: first off, I'm not sure if this goes against YouTube's policies or rules. I've been trying to contact them, but it's virtually impossible to get ahold of them. Does anyone know?
Secondly, there are irrelevant, disrupting video ads that I cannot remove and links to other videos, taking the user from the platform.
So, are there other options? Any experts on Vimeo or Dailymotion for example?
Even YouTube is struggling with the storage/money issue, so I realize this might be an impossible question - I'm prepared to be disappointed.
