I mean, I agree. “content” is extremely an airquote situation, as an abstraction. I also dislike the term, but need some kind of catch-all for describing the ever increasing demand the fediverse has for space and processing. It’s a real problem, though one that many people (not me) are actively working to solve and I’m grateful for that work.
My concern about fediverse space has more to do with inter-connected federation storage issues, such as caching content from other instances. Having seen how even small instances balloon in costs, it has completely scared me away from even attempting to host a small instance. I might have this wrong though, but I’ve heard horror stories about space requirements due to the caching-heavy nature of the federated internet.