I'm new here just like most other folks, but from what I've seen so far is: Lemmy is a place to post links to your content, Peertube is the place to post your videos, Pixelfed is the place to post GIFs and short videos. Lemmy can handle picture uploads, but not much more than that right now.

But none of these instances is going to survive if users don't donate. All those corporate social media sites were free because you weren't the customer, you were the product.

I can only imagine the instance admins having taken upload space into account, though I can't say for sure regarding the individual instance.

If you don't feel comfortable uploading to the instance itself, linking to other sources, such as peertube, should most definitely not require any significant amount of space.

Regarding autoplay of videos and content, I'm not sure how well Lemmy handles integration of outside sources. Though, it would only make sense to me if Lemmy natively supports Peertube videos or Pixelfed images, and if this is not the case, perhaps a Github ticket is required.

Regardless, I'd definitely also be interested in having a nice and integrated user experience, while not downing my own instance.

If you want to share a video, unless it is your own, original content, you should be linking to the original source, not uploading the video itself to Lemmy. Uploading content that for which you do not have rights to a platform is freebooting, and is theft. Linking to the original source lets you share the content with others while still providing the views and revenue to the actual creator, ensuring that they will be able to continue making the content that you have evidently found value in.

tl;dr - link to the original source, don't upload someone else's video to the platform.

Nusiance about video on fediverse systems would be in deduplication and distribution. Central sites like youtube can take a hash of any given video and if it matches one already just link to that file. I'm pretty sure the same exists on systems like minio or using an S3 bucket per instance, but to link videos across a federation would either need to replicate the file and serve it P2P style, or hosts with a parculularly populat video are goin to get their bandwidth hammered.