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PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding

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Re: PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding

#91
post #58

I like the idea of PeerTube, but there are many hurdles. Anyone whose ISP/firewall/etc blocks all Torrent traffic is going to have a major challenge - which means that while part of what PeerTube has been so far is educational videos, they're not accessible in most school environments. That's a big challenge to overcome. The other is pretty simple, and a reason I have not used PeerTube to watch a single video. If you…

> Anyone whose ISP/firewall/etc blocks all Torrent traffic is going to have a major challenge

WebRTC is over port 5004, which is common for telecommunications like VOIP providers. VOIP isn't as common as port 80 (www), but I'd imagine that there's a good risk of outrage if ISPs start blocking the VOIP port.

> You're slowing down my connection and your website is causing me send data to someone I do not know.

This is a legitimate concern IMO. So the PeerTube federation needs to be clear and allow users to opt-out (or even opt-out default / opt-in for benefits) to stay on the moral high ground.

Re: PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding

#92
post #66
post #58

I like the idea of PeerTube, but there are many hurdles. Anyone whose ISP/firewall/etc blocks all Torrent traffic is going to have a major challenge - which means that while part of what PeerTube has been so far is educational videos, they're not accessible in most school environments. That's a big challenge to overcome. The other is pretty simple, and a reason I have not used PeerTube to watch a single video. If you…

> If you're using my machine and my bandwidth to host or transfer your video to another person, you're going to pay me for it That's a bit ridiculous. No one is ever gonna pay you for that. You get something for free, the video you want to watch, and the deal here is that your unused upload bandwidth gets used to help transfer it to others. It's a social contract thing, and thinking you might get a better deal magica…

Just because you’re downloading something doesn’t mean uploads don’t affect it. In fact, upload often cripples bandwidth.

https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Introduction...

Re: PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding

#93
post #66
post #58

I like the idea of PeerTube, but there are many hurdles. Anyone whose ISP/firewall/etc blocks all Torrent traffic is going to have a major challenge - which means that while part of what PeerTube has been so far is educational videos, they're not accessible in most school environments. That's a big challenge to overcome. The other is pretty simple, and a reason I have not used PeerTube to watch a single video. If you…

> If you're using my machine and my bandwidth to host or transfer your video to another person, you're going to pay me for it That's a bit ridiculous. No one is ever gonna pay you for that. You get something for free, the video you want to watch, and the deal here is that your unused upload bandwidth gets used to help transfer it to others. It's a social contract thing, and thinking you might get a better deal magica…

> It is using your upload while you download a video. That does not harm you.

An outbound connection is one of the very first things that happens when requesting anything over a network. Not to mention if you're doing any video chatting or gaming.

Re: PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding

#94

What the people who want decentralized services don't realize is that the content creators want centralized services (whether they realize it or not). In the old days we needed YouTube because you needed a Flash encoder if you wanted to make video accessible on the web to everyone. Now anyone can host video on anything. You can throw even throw some comments on the bottom if you want. But what those who create want i…

> What the people who want decentralized services don't realize is that the content creators want centralized services (whether they realize it or not). Ideally you wouldn't decentralize the UI/UX, but the cloud server architecture it runs on. You could still maintain the same centrally accessible experience. That's the thing people need to understand, the frontend (UI) can be seperated and decoupled from the backend…

It's not just about UI/UX. You need a centralized backend to return recommendations in a reasonable time (if you need to query all the decentralized instances each time, it'll be incredibly slow)... which means that you go back to the scenario where a centralized instance is the source of traffic, decides what is recommended and what isn't.

I guess there's still one advantage in that scenario: somebody can build a competing recommendation service while using the same underlying videos.

Re: PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding

#95

What the people who want decentralized services don't realize is that the content creators want centralized services (whether they realize it or not). In the old days we needed YouTube because you needed a Flash encoder if you wanted to make video accessible on the web to everyone. Now anyone can host video on anything. You can throw even throw some comments on the bottom if you want. But what those who create want i…

Youtube started banning politically inconvenient youtubers. And it's their right. That alone is a good enough reason for an alternative, centralized or not. The end user doesn't care about the underlying technology, as long as it works.

Yup, but it has to work as in: provide good video recommendations, allow for low latency 720p streaming at the very least.

Re: PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding

#96

What the people who want decentralized services don't realize is that the content creators want centralized services (whether they realize it or not). In the old days we needed YouTube because you needed a Flash encoder if you wanted to make video accessible on the web to everyone. Now anyone can host video on anything. You can throw even throw some comments on the bottom if you want. But what those who create want i…

What the people who want decentralized services don't realize is that the content creators want centralized services (whether they realize it or not).

Where do you draw the line? Social networks are already decentralized, so creators have to crosspost to reach their audience on all platforms. Seems to be working, at least for some.

Re: PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding

#97
post #33
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distributed and decentralized mean different things. distributed implies a distributor, which is itself a centralized function and in fact the internet has several of these centers of decentralisation that make sure that the grand partitions of high value 'land' assets such as IP address blocks and domain names are apportioned in an explicitly centralized manner. 'Decentralized' as it is commonly understood is about…

The Internet is largely decentralized. Individual nets form peering agreements with each other.

The internet is so much more than a bunch of peering agreements. You can make a peering agreement with a network that you can't get transit to all you want, but if the underlying physical layer operator says no, you are out of luck. Maybe they'll let you in if you bribe them, maybe not. And this is Geography rules above all else here, which means concentration of access occurs where advantageous locations permit, and central points of control eventually monopolize these. Fiber backbones and undersea cables and major internaps etc. cost a lot to build and maintain. The reason net neutrality is an issue at all is because the tradition of apolitical cooperative peering is under sustained attack from the natural forces of network centralization.

And you didn't address the issues I pointed out about the explicitly centralized 'land title' systems which distribute critical location identities to users. This is to say nothing of the ongoing tendency of higher layer de facto centralization of value location assets such as search and messaging.

Decentralisation isn't non-existent, it is just a temporary transition phase from one centralized hierarchy to another.

Re: PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding

#98

What the people who want decentralized services don't realize is that the content creators want centralized services (whether they realize it or not). In the old days we needed YouTube because you needed a Flash encoder if you wanted to make video accessible on the web to everyone. Now anyone can host video on anything. You can throw even throw some comments on the bottom if you want. But what those who create want i…

Nothing about any of that couldn't happen on a decentralised/federated network. The drama could obviously happen, though likely about different issues to those on YouTube. The discoverability could happen on a decentralised system, as could ad money/subscription payments, recommendations or anything else.

Nothing about what makes someone successful on a site like YouTube needs it to be centralised to be possible.

Re: PeerTube, the “Decentralized YouTube”, succeeds in crowdfunding

#100

What the people who want decentralized services don't realize is that the content creators want centralized services (whether they realize it or not). In the old days we needed YouTube because you needed a Flash encoder if you wanted to make video accessible on the web to everyone. Now anyone can host video on anything. You can throw even throw some comments on the bottom if you want. But what those who create want i…

youtube is great for building an audience, but not nessesarily good for keeping it. A lot of niches have great success with patreon, but great trouble with keeping their videos on youtube (and in some cases keeping them in their subscribers feeds even when they are not taken down). The issues range from youtube's automatic enforcement of content guidelines (which appears more or less random), their ever increasing st…

Exactly. Youtube isn't a means to monetize, necessarily, that comes with audience regardless of platform. If a majority of people switched off of youtube, and began doing their content independently the monetization would inevitable have to follow the content creators, regardless of platform. That's the problem here. Youtube is not necessarily good for content creators, but rather gives a centralized platform for ad agencies to sponsor their products.

However the future is in platform being irrelevant, and acting only as a communication protocol for data. This will allow for both building communities, and since it's only a protocol greater freedoms for content creators, and also greater freedoms for companies to sponsor content creators as they won't be restricted by another organization's policies.

Youtube will ultimately just be major news network spam, with reduced diversity. You can already see late night show spam, and news organizations getting preferential treatment on the platforms. These organizations will never be adequate for the internet due to their bureaucratic nature.

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