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PeerTube v2

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Re: PeerTube v2

#71

Post by olah_1 »

kauffj wrote: post #10
mikece wrote: post #3

The peer-to-peer storage and sharing of video files isn't the hard part: it's the ability to search for and discover content that makes YouTube compelling in my opinion. Are any of these p2p YouTube replacements presenting a compelling way to search/discover content in a distributed way? Or if the search index is centralized, do any of them have a compelling model for staying funded without selling everyone's search/…

You could look at LBRY ( https://lbry.tech https://lbry.com https://beta.lbry.tv ). LBRY is similar to PeerTube in open and decentralization, but all content metadata is written to a blockchain, which means everyone/anyone can access the index. This blockchain can then be searched ( https://github.com/lbryio/lighthouse ) or extracted to SQL ( https://github.com/lbryio/chainquery ).

Sadly, LBRY isn't able to track view counts. Which makes organic, network effects really difficult.

Maybe they could implement a naive "view tracking" by having the client do small proof of work when they interact with content?

Similar to voting in NotaBug? https://github.com/notabugio/notabug

Re: PeerTube v2

#72

Post by olah_1 »

rapnie wrote: post #29
m12k wrote: post #6

Does anyone know of a successful server-based peer-to-peer project other than TOR and cryptocurrencies? I'm all for breaking free of the stranglehold of centralized proprietary platforms, but it also seems to me that most of the open source projects that ever really succeed at competing against entrenched proprietary incombents are the ones where a centralized service is being provided by a non-profit (e.g. Wikimedia…

Check Awesome P2P: https://github.com/kgryte/awesome-peer-to-peer I like https://datproject.org and the idea of https://beakerbrowser.com (with Beaker you can setup a website without needing a server) Edit: There is also an Awesome Dat at https://github.com/dat-land/awesome-dat/blob/master/readme.m...

Dat is cool, but it's hardly "successful". Who is even using it other than Beaker and hobby projects.

Re: PeerTube v2

#73

Post by olah_1 »

m12k wrote: post #6

Does anyone know of a successful server-based peer-to-peer project other than TOR and cryptocurrencies? I'm all for breaking free of the stranglehold of centralized proprietary platforms, but it also seems to me that most of the open source projects that ever really succeed at competing against entrenched proprietary incombents are the ones where a centralized service is being provided by a non-profit (e.g. Wikimedia…

>Does anyone know of a successful server-based peer-to-peer project other than TOR and cryptocurrencies?

Gun is being used successfully by a number of companies and projects AFAIK. Internet Archive, Hackernoon, NotABug.io, DTube (maybe they aren't anymore, not sure).

It performs better than webrtc in some use cases too

Re: PeerTube v2

#74

Post by SamBam »

jasode wrote: post #70
tiborsaas wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not necessarily oppose it. All there needs to be done is to expose a static, daily generated JSON file that contains all videos on the instance. This has nothing to do with the speed of light. Anyone then could build a search index and build a good search experience. To combat spam, instances should reveal up/downvotes to indicate quality, I guess your fake math video would not get much love from the communit…

>This has nothing to do with the speed of light. Please take extra care to correctly parse what I actually wrote in response to the gp. Yes, speed-of-light is still a limitation based on the gp's constraint of "search/discovery in a _distributed_ way" which means the search algorithm avoids central servers and loops through a bunch of remote p2p nodes to parse a bunch of exposed JSON manifest files. If instead, the s…

You're using "search/discovery in a distributed way" in a very literal manner. I interpreted the question as being one much more meaningful to the vast majority of users: "can a user search for content across the various distributed servers?"

That's all an end-user cares about.

Indexing videos once a day (or once an hour or whatever) would be very feasible. Indeed, different servers could create their own indexes, and some might be better at sorting for relevance than others.

Re: PeerTube v2

#75

Post by wiether »

krageon wrote: post #54
upofadown wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe there needs to be a centralized server that is as easy to use as the proprietary ones, and then the hardcore users can set up their own and federate with the central one? I think if you take care of the basic concepts, the rest is easy. Technical details about server organization are not really that important. The root problem seems to be that people have trouble looking past the app/program that they interact…

> Perhaps we need to teach Perhaps we need to start accepting that not everyone wants to know the particulars of the things that we care about. The need to teach new things is one of the big forces standing in the way of wide adoption of a lot of open solutions.

Are you familiar with the proverb "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" ?

It's not about teaching everyone how to setup a PT instance, but how things works for the best outside a totaly centralised and company-owned system.

Re: PeerTube v2

#76

Post by jasode »

SamBam wrote: post #74
jasode wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This has nothing to do with the speed of light. Please take extra care to correctly parse what I actually wrote in response to the gp. Yes, speed-of-light is still a limitation based on the gp's constraint of "search/discovery in a _distributed_ way" which means the search algorithm avoids central servers and loops through a bunch of remote p2p nodes to parse a bunch of exposed JSON manifest files. If instead, the s…

You're using "search/discovery in a distributed way" in a very literal manner. I interpreted the question as being one much more meaningful to the vast majority of users: "can a user search for content across the various distributed servers?" That's all an end-user cares about. Indexing videos once a day (or once an hour or whatever) would be very feasible. Indeed, different servers could create their own indexes, an…

>That's all an end-user cares about.

I imagined gp (mikece) as a HN techie (not an oblivious end-user) and thought he was wondering about how to use programming technology to avoid central servers ... and therefore, me interpreting "search/discovery in a distributed way" in a very literal manner was the appropriate level of abstraction to mikece. Avoiding central servers (if possible) is an interesting goal to discuss because they have a tendency to attract disproportionate users which defeats the goals of decentralization.

>Indexing videos once a day (or once an hour or whatever) would be very feasible.

And here, you're interpreting what's feasible only at the level of the technical stack instead of considering several chess moves ahead to emergent group behaviors which renders the metadata-only type of index a solution as not end-user friendly.

>, and some might be better at sorting for relevance than others.

And that's the server that would end up becoming a defacto "centralized" server that people were trying to avoid. This is especially true if that superior server also includes the video data.

Consider that the http protocol itself is already decentralized. If that's true why do people perceive Youtube and Facebook as centralized when they're only nodes on a http network? Because decentralized protocols don't stop emergent group behavior towards centralization.

Re: PeerTube v2

#77

Post by savingGrace »

lewisflude wrote: post #43

Went on https://peertube.video/ and immediately got a bunch of porn. Not really sure from a consumer aspect this is yet fully there from a UX perspective! But the tech is really interesting and as a federated alternative I could see it doing really well. Best of luck to the team!

This was my first thought. With all of these YT alternatives I always end up asking who determines what content is saved/available? What if it doesn't go along with their beliefs or political stance? There's a fine line between going too far in each direction. e.g. China vs Pirate Bay

Edit: "a system where videos require manual approval by administrators before posting them" If you're seeing a ton of porn, then clearly the sysadmin's beliefs/views don't align with mine.

Re: PeerTube v2

#78

Post by littlestymaar »

lewisflude wrote: post #43

Went on https://peertube.video/ and immediately got a bunch of porn. Not really sure from a consumer aspect this is yet fully there from a UX perspective! But the tech is really interesting and as a federated alternative I could see it doing really well. Best of luck to the team!

Peertube, 5 years in: YouTube still has a monopoly on generalist video streaming, but at least pornhub and xvideos are dead.

Re: PeerTube v2

#79

Post by tiborsaas »

jasode wrote: post #76
SamBam wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're using "search/discovery in a distributed way" in a very literal manner. I interpreted the question as being one much more meaningful to the vast majority of users: "can a user search for content across the various distributed servers?" That's all an end-user cares about. Indexing videos once a day (or once an hour or whatever) would be very feasible. Indeed, different servers could create their own indexes, an…

>That's all an end-user cares about. I imagined gp (mikece) as a HN techie (not an oblivious end-user) and thought he was wondering about how to use programming technology to avoid central servers ... and therefore, me interpreting "search/discovery in a distributed way" in a very literal manner was the appropriate level of abstraction to mikece. Avoiding central servers (if possible) is an interesting goal to discus…

There could be multiple search servers. I don't understand how that goes against the centralized nature, links to the video hosting instances would still be essential. Distributed services still benefit the traffic from Google, DDG, etc. Why this project is special?

I fail to see how an search index would be bad user experience. Compare that to the current situation of 61 isolated, unsearchable PeerTube instances.

Re: PeerTube v2

#80

Post by vincent-toups »

gillesjacobs wrote: post #8

In the space of distributed video platforms, I think Peertube has the right idea: Bitchute is gaining a lot of traction, but the core issue of centralized control remains. Distributed content delivery is not enough to prevent censorship and viewer manipulation. Federation will allow many platforms to proliferate and solves this problem. I hope Peertube gains traction, but they're fighting an uphill battle when it com…

I've started to see _engagement_ as a mal-feature. One thing I prefer about Mastodon is that its much less engaging than twitter, which is psychotically optimized to keep my eyeballs on it.
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