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Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

diode.zone

251–260 of 307 posts

Re: Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

#251

If my favourite youtubers started posting exclusively on peer tube I wouldn't mind at all. One has outright stated he suspects he'll be cancelled at some point, and already dual uploads. And I check his instance fairly regularly. To break it down further - it's not much of a deal breaker to go to "coolvideoguy.com" instead of searching "cool video guy" in the youtube search bar.

I guess it depends on how you consume media. A big part of what I consume on YouTube is on my TV, thanks to subscriptions to channels. Since there is no Android TV app for Peertube at the moment, the only way I would watch content from a Peertube channel would be on my computer. Which is not how I like consuming this content.

You probably have a web browser on your TV that could go to any peertube instance. Even if it doesn't support WebRTC, plain HTTP streaming would be used as fallback. Also NewPipe client on Android has Peertube support.

Slightly off-topic, but do you think having a computer you don't control running in your TV is such a great idea? It sounds like an IoT/security nightmare, unless you can flash a system you control on there.

Re: Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how does Google “harvest attention?”

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Ads

I believe the distinction they are trying to make, if any, is harvesting attention vs harvesting information. Fair enough, while Google as a whole is more on harvesting information (I would say Facebook too), Youtube employs a bunch of dark patterns to make users remain on the site.

At the end of the day, they go hand in hand, those ads need to be served.

Re: Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

#253

What really interests me is, how I can host a PeerTube instance, without getting into all sorts of responsibility issues, like people uploading videos containing illegal stuff (upload filter laws). I would love to give my server something to do, but with the current law, I simply do not want to be responsible for what people upload and spread via my instance and my server. Does PeerTube offer me a way of reviewing vi…

I think the usual approach is similar to any other service hosting: don't do open registrations unless you feel like dealing with the moderation and legal consequences.

Have a contact form where people can request an account. Create accounts for trusted peers. I'm unaware if Peertube has a "moderate first" setting but it should not be hard to implement... it's just not the assumed usecase of Peertube so far.

Re: Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have a hard time convincing any creator to cut off a revenue source like ads for ideological reasons.

it's not like the OG creators expected money from it. They did it as a part time hobby to show friends. They didn't expect to transform their lives. I get just as much enjoyment watching creators who only spend a few hours per week on their content as a hobby as those who have turned it into a giant company with employees and a studio. Actually, I get less enjoyment from those who have overly commercialized their cha…

Some of the best content on Youtube takes time and money to make - even for hobbyists and enthusiasts, and much of it would be impossible if creators were also forced to hold a second full-time job to cover their budget. I say "second" because content creation is a job whether it's compensated for or not. And not everyone who makes a living at it has a giant company with employees at a studio.

Re: Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

#255

The submission links to 4:19 into the video, probably unintentionally? Sadly peertube seems to have to buffer from the beginning to play from this position.

> Sadly peertube seems to have to buffer from the beginning to play from this position.

That's weird. What browser are you running? Is it downloading video directly from the server or is it doing WebRTC P2P download?

The former (direct download) is intended as fallback mode and i believe it uses HLS chunking which may or may not be well supported by your browser.

Re: Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. Wikipedia did.

Wikipedia is not distributed, anonymous, or censor-proof.

Peertube is closer to MediaWiki than Wikipedia. Anyone can setup an instance, and scrap/share content from other instances using URLs. Nothing is distributed, anonymous or censorship-proof... but the entire network is federated and pseudonymous.

Re: Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

#257
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing: It doesn't have to pay off and it doesn't have to generate revenue. That's not its goal. It is not a business model. If we want good content und independence from YouTube, perhaps it is time to see, that it might cost us a tiny bit of money each month, to uphold our freedom. One rented server can easily support many users, each of those can chip in to finance renting the server. It can be done trans…

One could also post chunks of videos to a channel on an existing (corporate) video platform in an obscured form, such that they survive transcoding, and reconstitute them in the client. For example, invert the Pr channel, and reverse audio frames (realistically, do something better). There's your free CDN, provided by a legacy video platform in a way which (at least conceivably, if one properly tailors his approach)…

I'd be curious how much data you could store for free on Youtube given some clever steganography.

Re: Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

#258
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use your unused upstream bandwidth. Like bit torrent for video.

So why not just make the video available on torrent? It's even possible to streamline the experience for torrents like how Popcorntime has done. Users don't need to even be technical enough to understand what torrents are - the same way users don't need to understand tcp/ip to visit a website.

Bittorrent protocol is not supported in browsers. Peertube uses Webtorrent, which is a WebRTC port of the Bittorrent protocol. Those two networks are incompatible but the magnet hashes are the same and there is progress in desktop clients implementing Webtorrent peering.

You can try to think of Peertube as Popcorn Time with user following and channels and comments... and interop with the rest of the Fediverse.

Re: Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

#259

I don't understand the economics of this at all. Video distribution is bandwidth heavy. If you're running your own peer tube instance the server costs are surely going to outstrip any revenue you make from it. if users have to carry that load and seed your stuff they'll have to waste their own storage. What is the incentive for anyone to do this? Exacerbated by the fact that the entire thing mostly seems to attract p…

> What is the incentive for anyone to [seed content]?

The incentive is to make content you like accessible to more people. Of course you can do it in your "garage" if you have huge hard drives and good connectivity, but you can also do it as a collective by setting up your own instance and mirroring other instances aligned with your values/interests.

There is exactly zero incentive for an instance to mirror public instances where people can upload terabytes of trash content. But there is strong incentives to replicate well-moderated instances with quality content, because the cost of that is very low (you can rent a VPS with 2TB HDD for ~20€/mo these days).

> Exacerbated by the fact that the entire thing mostly seems to attract people who get banned from anything else

I don't think that's the case. For now i've mostly seen established non-profits (eg. libre software/culture NGOs and workers cooperatives) who were disenchantized with Youtube. I've seen exactly one white supremacist instance, and it got delisted from "official" instances list in under 24h.

Re: Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need an app? All it takes is a webbrowser. Also if you're on Android, i believe Newpipe (FLOSS) supports Peertube sources.

Sure, I definitely want to use a web-browser on my TV with a remote control. On mobile I'm not the kind "I need an app to access that service", but on TV, where I consume most of my YouTube content, I DO need an app. Because otherwise the UX will be an absolute nightmare.

I'm not arguing against specific UX, i'm arguing having something as "unsmart" as a TV embed a computer system you don't control is overly dangerous and can lead to undesired side-effects such as random advertisement popping up, or remote hackers accessing your TV's microphone/camera if it has some.

Be sure to let us know how Newpipe fares on your "smart" TV :)

EDIT: It appears there's a lot more Android clients than i knew https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use-third-party-application

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