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We Are Trying Out PeerTube

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101–110 of 147 posts

Re: We Are Trying Out PeerTube

#101
post #7

The problem for the Fediverse will always be domains, in my opinion. It sounds silly to the technical demographic, but to a normal person, it is a massive issue. "Which server do I choose to get in bed with?" It's not just a question of which server do you trust to be a good actor and to not shut down tomorrow. It's also a question of which domain name do you want associated with your user account? Do you want alice@…

To get a little philosophical, there's a kind of "lack of self" inherent in minimizing oneself into a normalized default like GMail. Someone with a common name ends up being "bob.jones.23@gmail.com" - and if you were the first "bob.jones", you will get no end of messages erroneously addressed to you and consequent exposure to the secrets of the others.

The irony is that because email is so broken as an open platform, this normalized default so prone to collision has become the legitimate one, and everything else is filtered out...just like what tends to happen in other domains of society. It's easy upfront, but we're finally getting past the initial adoption of these technologies, and overall quality of service - from initial UX to issues like these - is going to become an increasingly large factor.

Re: We Are Trying Out PeerTube

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it used to be, then people on social media such as Twitter started reporting things like "why is this Bounty ad next to a controversial figure like Pewdiepie". That's when companies paying for ads started to care and pulled funding.

Right, so the idea is to separate the two experiences, like I said.

You can't separate the two experiences. What the poster was saying is that it was already tried. They were already separated.

And then advertisers realized that having your ads displayed on video content that is damaging to your company's image is generally Really Really Bad for PR. No company is going to sign on for your platform if they can't control where and how their ads are shown.

Re: We Are Trying Out PeerTube

#104
post #70
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also means that if these get popular they will coalesce into an oligopoly. Those huge domains will then be pressured by the costs of hosting and the need to improve the protocol to monetize their users with ads or surveillance. Congratulations, we reinvented Facebook. Anything with any hierarchy in its namespace will follow this path. Only pure P2P has a chance of avoiding it, and pure P2P is very hard to build an…

I fail to see what the problem is here. So you end up with a couple big free providers that serve ads (like Gmail, Yahoo!, Outlook, etc.) and some smaller premium providers (like Fastmail, G-Suite, ProtonMail, etc.) and if someone really wants to they can even host their own. Also, if someone had a neat idea for a new Fediverse business they can launch it and interoperate with all the existing ones (like starting a n…

Consider how Facebook got started. It didn't appear out of thin air and immediately dominate the market, it was a competitor fighting against LiveJournal, MySpace etc and it managed to achieve monolithic control through becoming the defacto standard.

As a separate analogy, consider a server for a MMO. MMO servers live and die based off the usercount, and lower count servers are considered less desirable for other incoming users. So what ends up happening is that players congregate around the server that has the most users, which in turn drives up costs for said server requiring them to take in more money (through donations or ads or subscriptions) and soon they become the standard for other servers to follow.

Even if other servers end up hosting, few reach the same numbers because most new users are instead redirected or drawn to existing servers with a high user count. So we're back to stage 1 where the fediverse hasn't really solved anything at all. Said competitor may then choose to instead jump off the fediverse and take their users with them (because you become associated with certain other negative groups which are bad for your image), the fediverse starves because your average user doesn't care and then we have Facebook again.

Re: We Are Trying Out PeerTube

#105
post #3

I mean good for them diversifying but it’s such a weird thing that of all the stuff to complain about on YT they go out of their way to mention having to tag videos as appropriate for children and/or for children. Like surely that’s such a tiny thing. It seems like the author is trying to muster up some nondescript hate for YT when they were going to move for ideological reasons anyway.

It has more to do with these recent YT changes causing big issues with monetization and community-building. Less revenue, but also comments are now disabled for example. If you make content which could in any way be aimed for kids, or has kids appearing in the video (with some nuances) then you don't get comments which are huge for building a community. And if you get it wrong, the video or channel could be demonitiz…

Meanwhile, PeerTube doesn’t have monitization of any kind. And if they ever do, it will have to somehow contend with the same sort of advertising pressure that got Google, the world’s largest company, to forgo a good slice of revenue.

Re: We Are Trying Out PeerTube

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...but gmail isn't that ubiquitous! A large majority of the emails I receive are from non-gmail addresses. True, most of these are related to where people work, but still, it drives decentralization, and I think most people understand that email ≠ gmail.

Many of those mails from non Google domains are still being processed by Gmail under the hood. Last I checked, I think Google was processing something like 2/3 of all email.

Really! I'm surprised, Exchange in particular seems to be pretty ubiquitous in the business world.

Not to mention, I do know a fair number of people with non-gmail personal addresses—iCloud, Outlook.com, Yahoo etc.

Re: We Are Trying Out PeerTube

#107
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the choice never was "gmail or your own domain". Pre-gmail it already was likely to be one of a few large providers, (and to a good degree still is). The argument sounds a bit like "gmail won because gmail won": For gmail to be the default assumption, they already have to have won.

> the choice never was "gmail or your own domain" Before I had gmail, I used my ISP email address. While using my ISP email address, I set up an email server with a dynamic hostname -- homeip.net at the time. It 100% worked. There absolutely was a choice. You just had to be technical to know it existed in the first place.

You misunderstand what I'm saying. There was no binary "gmail or own domain", because there always was "large mail provider or own domain", which turned into "large mail provider, large mail provider N+1 (gmail) or own domain"

Re: We Are Trying Out PeerTube

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it used to be, then people on social media such as Twitter started reporting things like "why is this Bounty ad next to a controversial figure like Pewdiepie". That's when companies paying for ads started to care and pulled funding.

Right, so the idea is to separate the two experiences, like I said.

Look, at some level it's kinda irrational, but it also doesn't matter when the demands are made by the people that pay you. "Advertiser friendly content" is a real thing.

Re: We Are Trying Out PeerTube

#110

Wow. > When it comes to uploading videos, PeerTube is a joy to use and a lot more straightforward than YouTube with its bazillions of options and “is that for children??? is it OK to show to my 2 years old?” ridiculous regulatory checks. So basically: - Google doesn't have checks: "Wow, look how irresponsible Google is." - Google does have checks: "Wow, look how annoying Google is."

This is probably a reference to Youtube's reaction of the COPPA lawsuit.

Basically, Youtube will hold you responsible if you upload something to Youtube without properly tagging if the content is rated for children or not.

However, they also said that anything that may be related to children (toys, kids' movies, etc.) should be tagged for children.

If you tag something as rated for children and it's not, Youtube will punish you. However, if you talk about a new Frozen movie or review Lego (toys) and use swears, that's children's content with adult language, and therefore punishable.

The FTC has published rules about this[0] but has in the past stated it intended to go after Youtubers who broke the rules.

These toggles also have an impact on how your videos are monetized and functionality [1].

So, an adult reviewing lego and calling it "fucking amazing" might be right in the middle between "FTC lawsuit" and "account banned by Youtube".

Of course this is all further complicated by the fact that other countries will have different legislation. A video marked as viewable for children by the Youtube rules may get you into legal trouble in another country.

I'm not necessarily against COPPA but the way the lawsuit was settled caused quite a stir on Youtube and threatened the income of quite a few people, which was made worse by the terrible UI Google has built into Youtube (you couldn't mark a set of videos as "for children", you had to go through each one, and every day a video was up was a day the FTC could send lawyers after you). If Google had handled this better by providing the necessary tools and clear information, this wouldn't have been a big issue at all.

[0]: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2019/11/... [1]: https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/13/21012611/youtube-copp...

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