This is not about DVD subtitles, which are images as you say. This is about “Line 21” closed captioning. I.E. the text data that is embedded in an analog tv signal. There should be no OCR needed.

Honestly, there isn’t another platform that isn’t a step down. The algorithm that drives the For You Page is leaps and bounds ahead of Instagram and YouTube.

The best analogy I can give is if Linux was banned for personal use in the US. Sure, you could use Windows or macOS; the later is even Unix based! However, it would be a downgrade for Linux users. Even something like FreeBSD wouldn’t be a seemless transition, and the communities that were built would take time to recover.