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Can you actually upload a video (its complete data) to steemit or only place a link to it (e.g. to youtube)?

I get your point that hosting (aka paying for) your own IPFS node defeats the point of paying d.tube by these 25% as d.tube actually not delivers on the video hosting for that payment.
But if you can live with that and e.g. just focus on potential upvotes from d.tube users instead that's at least a workaround. This means it's a technical option, without judging the current situation.

Well, in both cases, dtube and steemit, its just a link. If something is on the ipfs network which you dont need steem(it) or dtube for, you can at least link to it like so, you dont need dtube for that - and i think embedding a video directly into the post should also be possible though ive not dealt extensivly with html in order to know how exactly you embed a video file. Personaly i tended to watch sempers videos through the direct link (labled IPFS in the article) anyways and dtube is unneccessary for that.