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Dtube – A decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS

d.tube

61–70 of 200 posts

Re: Dtube – A decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS

#61
post #55
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are enough benefits to the platform and semi-popular (likeable) Youtubers switch to it, the problem should resolve itself after a few days. Luckily antisemites etc. are a minority of the population and can be easily outnumbered.

That's a really big IF, and semi-popular Youtubers have even more to lose from association with the existing content on there than most of us.

I think the question is if the risk of very loose association with that content is higher than the risk of loosing out on revenue by arbitrary decisions from Youtube.

Given what happend over the last year with the Adpocalypse, most of them realized that being at the whim of Youtube is a real risk, and are now looking to diverisfy their income streams (see growth of Patreon).

Re: Dtube – A decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS

#62
post #60

I like the idea and would love to try it! I have one small concern though. Since the incentive (money) is given to popular videos, why people should post unpopular opinions in Stemmit or videos in Dtube? That is, if I upload a video of a cat doing some funny thing I'll get more tokens (potentially) that with a super technical video.

Having a platform that incentivizes popular content should in theory attract popular content to the platform. This should attract viewers to the platform, thus increasing the viewership available to see your less popular content. Meanwhile, incentivizing popular stuff doesn't take anything away from you or your content. You're not being penalised, so why complain?

> Having a platform that incentivizes popular content should in theory attract popular content to the platform. This should attract viewers to the platform, thus increasing the viewership available to see your less popular content.

Thanks for pointing that! I didn't though of it this way. To be honest, my fear is that this platform could turn possibly in some sort of niche. Right now, popular content is about X, so if I want to make quick profits, I'll create a video about X. More people will join and do the same.

I'm sure there are ways to fix that like giving people incentives for posting in unpopular topics. Potentially, each topic could be its own market!

> You're not being penalised, so why complain?

Not complaining at all for now. Just sharing my current thoughts! If I join a social media, I'd love to have diversity of content and opinion. I think in STEEM that could be hard, as it is in Reddit unless you subscribe to unpopular ones. Not a 100% bad thing though!

Re: Dtube – A decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS

#64
post #43
post #36

Ok, so I'm looking at a website that tells me it's decentralized. But from all I can tell this is just a good old website. Somebody has control over the domain name. Points it to servers of his choice. And the servers deliver content of his choice. What's decentralized about it?

Yup, DTube, like most projects related to STEEM still have a high degree of centralization. This reddit comment gives a good evaluation of DTube: https://www.reddit.com/r/dtube/comments/7ysdn1/how_distribut... So most parts of it could at their core be used in a distributed fashion, but are actually accessed via CDNs. E.g. you could use ipfs-companion[0] to alter all instances of ipfs.io URLs to point to a local IPFS…

This solution might make a lot of sense as a build-up process.

However, until DTube release a client so that the network can build, it's just a centralized video platform using IPFS and STEEM as storage backends. Unless clients are made available, it might as well use S3 and Postgres.

Re: Dtube – A decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS

#65

Also checkout peertube which is also federated but doesn't run on IPFS: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube

Also PeerTube is not tied to a CryptoCurrency and doesn't try to solve the problem of remuneration of the content producer.

It's a strictly technical solution to the problem of video hosting centralization.

Depending on your point of view it might be a good, bad or neutral thing.

In my opinion, it's good that we first try to have a solution that is first proven to work and then try to think about how (or if we should) integrate a remuneration system to the solution.

Re: Dtube – A decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS

#66
post #43
post #36

Ok, so I'm looking at a website that tells me it's decentralized. But from all I can tell this is just a good old website. Somebody has control over the domain name. Points it to servers of his choice. And the servers deliver content of his choice. What's decentralized about it?

Yup, DTube, like most projects related to STEEM still have a high degree of centralization. This reddit comment gives a good evaluation of DTube: https://www.reddit.com/r/dtube/comments/7ysdn1/how_distribut... So most parts of it could at their core be used in a distributed fashion, but are actually accessed via CDNs. E.g. you could use ipfs-companion[0] to alter all instances of ipfs.io URLs to point to a local IPFS…

> In a transitional phase to a distributed web I'd expect a lot of websites to employ a similar approach of using CDNs at first (since not everybode has local nodes running)

I'd like to think so, but a more cynical take is that efforts like this to trade on 'distributed' will either (and most likely) fail or, if they do get traction, ditch the distributed backend once it's served its purpose as a selling-point to attract early adoption.

Re: Dtube – A decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS

#67
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this a bad thing, let people post what they want to. Also if someone says YouTube is censoring them why wouldn't you believe it?

It's likely to forever remain a niche for that kind of content only. What reasonable person would say: "I know, I'll host my video on that website which opens with a list of conspiracy videos and has antisemitism promoted in the sidebar next to my content/face." (And even more - which popular company would do that?)

that's a filtering problem which should be user-tailored.

Re: Dtube – A decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS

#68
post #66
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, DTube, like most projects related to STEEM still have a high degree of centralization. This reddit comment gives a good evaluation of DTube: https://www.reddit.com/r/dtube/comments/7ysdn1/how_distribut... So most parts of it could at their core be used in a distributed fashion, but are actually accessed via CDNs. E.g. you could use ipfs-companion[0] to alter all instances of ipfs.io URLs to point to a local IPFS…

> In a transitional phase to a distributed web I'd expect a lot of websites to employ a similar approach of using CDNs at first (since not everybode has local nodes running) I'd like to think so, but a more cynical take is that efforts like this to trade on 'distributed' will either (and most likely) fail or, if they do get traction, ditch the distributed backend once it's served its purpose as a selling-point to att…

TBH, I'm not sure how big of a future video "platforms" will even have. With IPFS+Filecoin and a few other parts, it might become quite trivial to host your own video content. With that the focus could possibly shift to platforms like Patreon, and if the payment parts of that can be commoditized (via things like Stellar and SatoshiPay), maybe even back to the good old website. One can only dream...

Re: Dtube – A decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS

#69

So where does the money come from? This might be a question about STEEM more than DTube, but I couldn't figure it out. The DTube FAQ answer for "Where does the money come from" just says "The STEEM blockchain keeps printing new STEEM everyday. These new printed STEEM are given out as rewards." I'm hoping there's more to it than that, but I couldn't find what the mechanism for bringing value into the STEEM ecosystem i…

edit: https://steemit.com/faq.html#How_does_Steemit_work might be better.

"Every day, the Steem blockchain mints new STEEM tokens and adds them to a community's "rewards pool". These tokens are then awarded to users for their contributions, based on the votes that their content receives. Users who hold more tokens in their account as "Steem Power" will get to decide where a larger portion of the rewards pool is distributed."

Re: Dtube – A decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS

#70
I wonder if IPFS can be connected to Cloudflare such that CF ends up acting like a CDN for IPFS network. The content is encrypted (so that the CF does not know what's being served) and users can offer their own Cloudflare API keys to take part in the network.

Edit: Please tell me why the downvotes.

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