PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform • Hacker News Board

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#251

Post by trimethylpurine » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:15 AM UTC

djaro wrote: post #41

As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram. Even a decent 20-minute video can easily take 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor. I have a pretty small…

I guess you never used YouTube in the early days. It was a site for posting and watching random home made videos and recorded broadcasts. Just for fun. Revenue streams for creators came after Google bought it, I think. Along with the ads.

This might simply revive a platform that no longer exists. It might not be about paying creators or collecting ad revenue. It's peer to peer, after all.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#252

Post by duxup » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

pocksuppet wrote: post #9

PeerTube has some interesting technology with the P2P sharing between users who watch at the same time. But with these kind of projects I think there are unfortunately social factors that impact their success as well as technical factors. It's one thing to put a element on a HTML page (or implement video over webtorrent), it's quite another to make people actually watch it instead of their TikTok feed.

It reminds me of the other social media type experiments, I applaud their efforts but the underlying technology just isn’t a huge selling point to viewers compared to the actual content.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#253

Post by Gigachad » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

nirui wrote: post #236

Hasn't cared about PeerTube for a long time, but this software is getting really impressive. Maybe it's time to move towards the next step: getting publishers on board. I could totally see myself hooked if I can watch news on it. Can someone from a proper news agency, such as BBC, DW, Reuters, NYT etc test the software and maybe make a pitch? If these agencies are hosting their own PeerTube instances, that would be a…

Publishers won't get on board until you can work out how to sort out advertising, paid subscriptions, and blocking ad blockers.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#254

Post by Gigachad » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #66

WarmWash wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then start loading ads. Youtube's biggest threat ever died in the cradle because they foolishly thought users would volunteer money to them. No one with capital and capability looks at youtube, looks at youtube's audience, and says "Yeah, 30-40% ad-blocking and 4.5% paying for premium, these are the people I want to build services for!".

Those ad-blocked viewers are important, which is why YT doesn't actually crack down on them. Those are the people who will happily go to an alternative product. And while that product might start as a pirate YouTube, the one that nabs 30% of YT's traffic can certainly make a pivot to legit. If you're a content creator whose audience is mostly in that group, you're likely to start posting content directly on the compe…

Youtube won the war on ad blocking when most views moved to TV and mobile. While I've seen some people have hacked clients to run on TV platforms, the average person just either watches the ads or pays for youtube premium. The friction for ad blocking has gone up to the point youtube makes enough money to not care about the rest.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#255

Post by Gigachad » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:37 AM UTC

rpgbr wrote: post #29

hungryhobbit wrote: post #23

Stupid question: when people inevitably use this for pirate content, and the feds try to shut the service down ... what's the plan?

The feds will go after the instance admin that is sharing pirate content.

Isn't the design of peertube that you can view videos originally uploaded by other instances? So unless you decide to not federate, you are responsible for every video on every instance.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#256

Post by ndriscoll » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:38 AM UTC

jesse_dot_id wrote: post #239

ndriscoll wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like complaining that when you go to nginx.org, you aren't shown a bunch of websites or a search box to discover anything, so this web thing is garbage UX compared to the Facebook app. There's no "the federation". There are various sites that run peertube, some of which are federated with each other. Others have nothing to do with each other. Some are probably completely private. An example of federation migh…

I agree with you, but I was speaking to PeerTube's own claim that it is an alternative to YouTube, rather than the narrow use case you're describing. For the vast majority of the people on the planet, it is not an alternative to YouTube because it's very difficult to discover content. When I go to YouTube, I can find videos immediately. If I want to find videos via PeerTube, it's a journey. It's the same journey that…

> An alternative to Big Tech's video platforms

> PeerTube is a tool for sharing online videos developed by Framasoft, a french non-profit.

> PeerTube allows you to create your own video platform, in complete independence.

I think it's pretty clear that it's software for running your own video sharing platform? Sure, people are used to monopolies and consolidation now, but surely you can wrap you head around the idea that some people might want to host their own site? Like why are you here and not on reddit? Is this site a bygone way to do things? Or is it just... its own thing?

As I said above, I think entities tied to governments should be using something like this, not youtube. The obvious place to look for e.g. recorded meetings from your city would be your city website. Likewise with schools. And government functions like that absolutely should not be monetized and should not have ads attached.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#257

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:52 AM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #151

djaro wrote: post #41

As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram. Even a decent 20-minute video can easily take 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor. I have a pretty small…

"As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is lack of monetization." As a computer user I see that as the main advantage No third party intermediary No advertising Computer users need peer-to-peer options for sharing video with each other that do not use third party advertising companies, e.g., posing as "search engine" or "social media", to transfer the bits Whether PeerTube works well, I…

If YouTube was not an intermediary then it could not claim Section 230 immunity

https://compliancehub.wiki/section-230-the-backbone-of-the-i...

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#258

Post by PacificSpecific » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 2:58 AM UTC

djaro wrote: post #41

As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram. Even a decent 20-minute video can easily take 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor. I have a pretty small…

Thanks for the insight. Do you think something like nebula could ever be feasible?

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#259

Post by vegenaise » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 3:33 AM UTC

djaro wrote: post #58

paxys wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online video sharing doesn't have to exclusively mean professional "creators" who make content with hollywood-like budgets and expect massive returns. There are 100+ million accounts regularly uploading on Youtube and only around 2-3 million of them are in the partner program. The overwhelming majority get nothing.

The problem is that all of those accounts that don't earn money don't earn money because they get no views, because they make videos no one wants to watch. I don't know the exact statistics but a simple Google search says that 3% of videos on YouTube get 95% of the views. Remove the top 3% of creators, you remove 95% of views. The top channels get all the views because they're the only ones making videos people want…

i upload unlisted videos to share privately with a single family member. or as a backup so i dont have to store it on my phone etc. silly to assume that people post things because they want it to be seen by e v e r y o n e.

Re: PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform

#260

Post by vfclists » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 3:35 AM UTC

djaro wrote: post #41

As a professional YouTuber, the main issue I instantly see with this is the lack of monetization. I think people who don't make videos for a living severely underestimate how expensive it is to produce high-quality videos people want to watch. This isn't like writing a tweet or even posting a picture on Instagram. Even a decent 20-minute video can easily take 40 man-hours of high-skilled labor. I have a pretty small…

Not everyone is a "professional Youtuber" like you, and that includes a lot of Youtube who upload videos without any expectation of income, for who Youtube is mainly a free video hosting service that also allows them to reach a wider viewership.