I like the option to preserve originals. I wonder if this is now always done or if it is configurable. Often times I am preserving the original footage and project files anyways so don’t need an original. However other times I am just throwing footage straight from the camera and the archive is nice.

It also opens interesting possibilities like re-encoding down the road to new or better codecs or even just better encoders. For example it would be interesting to dedicate one background thread to re-encoding in a much higher effort, and possibly re-running this every few years to take advantage of encoder upgrades.

WordPress is always a good option. They have a freeium hosted option at wordpress.com or you can run your own. You can also always move to another provider or host it yourself.

Tumblr is also big and popular and there are tons of smaller hosts like https://bearblog.dev/.

IMHO the best and most supported way is just to post a message whenever you make a post. For example I toot on my mastodon whenever I release a new post. People then that share and reply to that toot.

This is done via simple automation that watches my feed and hits the mastodon API.

For actual blog subscribers I like to stick with regular RSS + WebSub, I don’t see much advantage to ActivityPub integration here.