[HN Gopher] Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]
        
       Author : x14km2d
       Score  : 218 points
       Date   : 2021-09-19 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (diode.zone)
 (TXT) w3m dump (diode.zone)
        
       | jstx1 wrote:
       | I was wondering who they were and why they were self-saboting.
       | Then I saw that it's a channel with 20 subscribers on youtube
       | with view numbers in the single digits for some videos. So
       | somebody went from not being watched on youtube, to not being
       | watched on peertube.
       | 
       | How did this even make it to the front page?
        
         | uuddlrlr wrote:
         | Peertube is interesting tech, and YouTube's de facto monopoly
         | on video hosting is less than ideal. Especially considering
         | that it's owned by the world's largest attention harvesting
         | operation.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | legitster wrote:
           | > de facto monopoly on video hosting
           | 
           | How do people believe this is even remotely true?
           | 
           | I have so many options to host videos, least of which is just
           | housing itself on my own damn server!
           | 
           | I don't know if the complaint here is that no one else will
           | do it for me for free, or that no one else will just hand me
           | viewers for free.
        
             | MrGilbert wrote:
             | > _I don 't know if the complaint here is that no one else
             | will do it for me for free, or that no one else will just
             | hand me viewers for free._
             | 
             | Devil's advocate: Which paid video-website with community
             | created content the size similar to Youtube may I join?
             | 
             | That's where the "de-facto" monopoly claim comes from, I
             | guess.
        
             | zimpenfish wrote:
             | > > de facto monopoly on video hosting > How do people
             | believe this is even remotely true?
             | 
             | I think if you add "...that people actually visit and
             | watch", it's more accurate. Sure, I can host my own videos
             | or put them on Vimeo or PeerTube - but YouTube is going to
             | get me more eyeballs more quickly (assuming I play the
             | promo games.)
        
             | nsonha wrote:
             | They mean if you care about reaching wider audiences, we
             | are aware of the various options to upload videos of those
             | nights when you felt adventurous
        
             | sircastor wrote:
             | It's not literally just hosting. That's not that hard. It's
             | distribution, discovery, promotion, accessibility. Right
             | now, if you want your video to be seen, you need to be on
             | YouTube.
        
           | Razengan wrote:
           | > _world 's largest attention harvesting operation._
           | 
           | I don't think Facebook owns YouTube :)
        
             | nsonha wrote:
             | Facebook is nothing comparing to Google, they have an OS
             | and a browser remember?
        
         | rastafang wrote:
         | Every little bits count
        
         | mdoms wrote:
         | This forum will launch anything decentralized or federated onto
         | the front page.
        
           | rapnie wrote:
           | I would guess that is because of high levels of interest in
           | decentralized / federated web technologies then. In any case
           | I am with that crowd too.
        
         | 3gg wrote:
         | The points made in the video are valid regardless of how many
         | viewers their channel has.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | parasanti wrote:
       | Before you think of how awful this site is, remember youtube in
       | the beginning as well. This could be a great alternative,
       | especially if they don't remove people without a good
       | explanation, sell your personal info or try to sway an opinion.
        
       | test542 wrote:
       | If you want PeerTube to become popular, make it easier for people
       | to upload videos. At the moment it's too confusing and
       | complicated; no content creator cares what "instance" means and
       | they never will. No one who creates an account and finds that
       | "uploads are not allowed on this instance" or encounters some
       | similar problem is going to waste any more time trying to use it.
       | If you leave it the way it is now, it's always just gonna be by
       | nerds for nerds. And more people are going to be enslaved by Big
       | Brother who controls YouTube. So please make it accessible to
       | normal people.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | See also why PGP failed.
        
       | cblconfederate wrote:
       | Why don't we just use BitTorrent for videos? Popcorn time works
       | reasonably well and we don't need a social layer, there are
       | already plenty of them. I d like to see everything that i like
       | being seeded with care by its owners
        
         | new_guy wrote:
         | Because people don't care about the actual videos, it's the
         | social aspect drives these sites. You could upload a video of
         | paint drying and get an active comment thread going on some
         | sites.
        
           | cblconfederate wrote:
           | Maybe. But you can have that even if YouTube was just a
           | frontend for torrents. I care about some of the videos, eg
           | lectures interesting conferences etc,
        
         | slim wrote:
         | Popcorntime does not have channels unfortunately
        
         | Popegaf wrote:
         | It does use Webtorrent by default (it can be turned off).
        
       | kebman wrote:
       | How does it measure up to LBRY / Odysee?
        
       | Barrin92 wrote:
       | 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 people who get banned
       | from anything else so the content isn't even going to attract
       | advertisers.
        
         | soheil wrote:
         | Perhaps efficiency shouldn't be the thing we optimize for in
         | this case. If you look at the internet it's extremely
         | inefficient, there are millions of DNS servers all kind of have
         | semi recent information about domains. There are millions of
         | websites mainly hosted on extremely inefficient servers. There
         | are millions of images and other assets mainly compressed less
         | than they should be wasting tons of bandwidth. Yet here we are,
         | the internet works and it works great. It'd be a sad day if
         | someone argued that we should abandon all this and give the
         | keys to someone like Google? Because it'd be more efficient?
         | Screw that!
        
         | belorn wrote:
         | There are people who like running their own linux server with
         | their own hardware. Occasionally those people are also
         | interesting in creating videos or have friends/family that are.
         | 
         | There are also people who get funded through sites like
         | patreon, who might not care too much for youtube advertisement
         | or YT freemium. Sometimes you even see youtube personalities
         | switching to twitch or other platforms just in order to escape
         | youtube and do legal activity which is just close to impossible
         | on youtube. There is an endless stream of youtube videos
         | complaing about youtube copyright system and how it makes their
         | job close to impossible in some cases. Game reviews and movie
         | reviews are two areas almost dominated by the issue of false
         | copyright claims, which has forced some creators to abandon the
         | platform as a revenue sources.
         | 
         | There is even float plane which was designed from the ground to
         | solve the youtube problem, created by a company that fully
         | relied on youtube for its existence. If your company existence
         | is depended on a free service provided by someone else, you
         | might want to reconsider how safe you should feel. PeerTube
         | might serve a similar purpose.
         | 
         | On top of that we have scientists who might want to know that
         | their research isn't taken down because of false copyright
         | claims or fleeting politics. A company that has linked
         | instruction videos in their books/teaching material might want
         | to be sure that links still work 10 years from now. Activists
         | might want to avoid the risk that their documentation doesn't
         | go dark from a political requests or false claim. Police
         | brutality victims might want to be sure that the copyrighted
         | music playing in the background, placed there intentionally to
         | get copyright claims, does not stop them from uploading videos.
        
         | throwuxiytayq wrote:
         | And yet, torrents are still a thing.
        
           | Barrin92 wrote:
           | because people want to download illegal movies and porn, or
           | host linux isos as a service for the commons. There's
           | practically no commercial activity around torrents because
           | it's an incredibly inefficient way to serve large amounts of
           | data.
        
             | zuminator wrote:
             | Legal or not, the fact that many people host and share
             | dozens of large torrents from their home servers for free
             | belies the claim that sharing video would necessarily be
             | too expensive to be practical or would devolve back to turn
             | off the century RealVideo quality.
        
             | gtirloni wrote:
             | How's it inefficient?
        
               | Barrin92 wrote:
               | because decentralized systems need to redundantly store
               | data, a lot. Youtube accounts for, depending on the
               | source 15% of global internet traffic.
               | 
               | The reason you can watch videos at 1080p wherever you are
               | in the world buffer free is because the system is
               | ridiculously optimized, cached locally, and so on. Do you
               | want to go back to 180p because one of the two guys
               | hosting that five year old video with 50k views you liked
               | just went offline?
        
               | gtirloni wrote:
               | Your second paragraph disproves your first, do you
               | realize that? Youtube caches locally in a decentralized
               | fashion, with redundant data, etc.
        
         | pacifist wrote:
         | Why would you want advertisers? Advertisers are part of the
         | problem.
        
           | cirenehc wrote:
           | A significant portion of content creators do it as a full
           | time job. Ads is a stable revenue stream for these content
           | creators. You as a consumer are free to move to any
           | decentralized video platform you like, but the main
           | bottleneck for any significant shift in market share depends
           | on content creators, and ultimately, on advertisers.
        
             | jcims wrote:
             | How much would I have to pay to replace the revenue that a
             | content creater would get from my eyeball traffic on
             | YouTube? From what I'm reading it's less than a penny per
             | video. I send about $30/mo to Patreon, that's enough for
             | what, 3000 videos? I watch YouTube way too much, but I
             | don't watch it that much.
             | 
             | Realistically I should be aiming to replace Google's
             | revenue for my eyeball traffic, because that covers all of
             | the costs as well. Still seems very doable.
             | 
             | It would be nice if Patreon partnered up with them and
             | handled the transactions.
        
               | themacguffinman wrote:
               | Realistically, every PeerTube viewer would also need to
               | pay for the thousands or more viewers any creator will
               | lose by forcing viewers to pay money and by moving to a
               | niche platform with worse UX and no serious discovery.
        
           | criley2 wrote:
           | People expecting content for free is the Original Sin.
           | Advertisers are just a side effect of peoples unwillingness
           | to pay for their content.
        
             | milkytron wrote:
             | People expect content for free because advertising has
             | allowed it. It didn't start that way.
        
               | criley2 wrote:
               | I mean, radio and TV were free OTA for decades. I don't
               | know what you want to call the "start" of content, but
               | ad-supported free models have been around for a very long
               | time.
        
           | iamstupidsimple wrote:
           | You'll have a hard time convincing any creator to cut off a
           | revenue source like ads for ideological reasons.
        
         | zelphirkalt wrote:
         | 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 transparently, so that users
         | always know what they are paying for and how much is covered
         | already for the month. It is time to learn, that we need to
         | support what we like financially, so that people can actually
         | live from providing us with it. As long as we do not do so,
         | people can only provide us with their creations by generating
         | revenue in other ways.
        
           | mattl wrote:
           | How do we get good content from a platform that is explicitly
           | copyleft? Will the vast majority of creators use this even as
           | a backup?
        
             | zelphirkalt wrote:
             | Why would copyleft have anything to do with the quality of
             | content people upload? I am not quite following the
             | connection there.
        
               | mattl wrote:
               | Most people don't care about the license of a place to
               | put their videos
        
               | detaro wrote:
               | Then why did you bring it up at all?
        
               | mattl wrote:
               | It's literally all over the Peertube homepage
        
               | Weryj wrote:
               | The license of the source code doesn't apply to the
               | content hosted.
        
               | mattl wrote:
               | I know. But people who cares about the server code care
               | more about such things. I made a copyleft movie and the
               | PeerTube site I put it on went down forever. YouTube and
               | archive.org remain up
        
             | the_third_wave wrote:
             | > How do we get good content from a platform that is
             | explicitly copyleft?
             | 
             | The same way we get good software from a 'community' which
             | is explicitly copyleft.
             | 
             | > Will the vast majority of creators use this even as a
             | backup?
             | 
             | The best way to use platforms like Peertube and Odysee is
             | by using it as a primary source, with Youtube and Vimeo
             | essentially playing the role of CDN. Should the censors not
             | like your video for $reasons they can block them 'till they
             | turn ultraviolet but they can not deny anyone access to
             | them. Make sure to advertise your alternative distribution
             | channel(s), use the same channel names and video titles so
             | they can be found through regular web search and you're set
             | [1].
             | 
             | [1] that it, until censorship reaches the network layer
        
               | mattl wrote:
               | I think that's a bad idea because I don't want people to
               | think watching video on a computer is okay.
               | 
               | Video (movies) should be enjoyed on a big screen with a
               | good screen.
               | 
               | These platforms should give creators a way to prohibit
               | viewing on small screens, Linux, etc.
        
           | tomxor wrote:
           | > 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.
           | 
           | This is the answer to so much of what's wrong with the modern
           | web. We need less business and to get more communities back
           | into the center of the web... it should be even easier today
           | since IaaS is so much cheaper, I think it's just a focus
           | problem, nothing is relevant to the big sites that act as the
           | lens to the web unless it's directly pumping money somewhere.
        
       | tinyhouse wrote:
       | "exploited by ads". Well, YouTube needs to make money somehow. If
       | you don't want ads you can pay a monthly fee like Netflix.
        
         | LightG wrote:
         | True, but as a typical user, I wish they'd just be straight up
         | about it.
         | 
         | Basically, it's user experience degradation until you're forced
         | to sign up.
         | 
         | How about trying to just reach out and offer a service without
         | killing my current experience?
         | 
         | I pay for other subscriptions so this isn't a money thing, but
         | I won't for youtube on principle. They ruined that platform.
        
         | carlhjerpe wrote:
         | They're probably still tracking me even though I pay right?
        
           | hortense wrote:
           | You can turn your history off if you want, but then you'll
           | get suggestions of videos you've already watched.
        
             | carlhjerpe wrote:
             | I've noticed and turned it back on tbh, but does it
             | actually mean they're not tracking me? They're already
             | tracking me all over the web
        
         | 3gg wrote:
         | Youtube forcing a subscription on everybody would be self-
         | sabotage. Their existence and ability to make profits rests
         | entirely on ads. And while the ads could be more ethical, they
         | choose instead to track people in every possible way,
         | exploiting their identity and fingerprint on the platform --
         | and outside the platform -- for maximum profit. So the ads are
         | not a choice, but the soul of the product. Peertube, instead,
         | does not exist to make profits.
         | 
         | So yes, exploited by ads.
        
       | chairhairair wrote:
       | The channel in this post has 20 YouTube subscribers and no more
       | than a couple thousand total YouTube views.
       | 
       | The trending page on PeerTube shows a list of videos with at most
       | a few dozen views.
       | 
       | Is PeerTube supremely unpopular (seems to have been launched
       | several years ago: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube), or am I
       | missing something? Does it really have an order of magnitude more
       | Github stars (https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube) than daily
       | viewers?
        
         | freshthought wrote:
         | Perhaps the most notable fact is how upvoted this article is.
         | Shows you how much people want to believe, maybe?
        
         | mraudiobook_com wrote:
         | Yes. Amazingly very few seemsl to care about decentralizing the
         | web and monitary systems.
         | 
         | Arguably the most important invention since the internet itself
         | ALL the big companies have huge incentive to kill the movement
         | because they can't make money off it.
        
         | supermatt wrote:
         | Peertube is really just an "app" providing a simple way to host
         | and publish your content online outside the control of
         | "service" providers that can also easily be accessed and shared
         | by the "fediverse" (in this case activitypub supporting
         | federated networks of servers and end users).
         | 
         | You can consume peertube content with any activitypub client
         | that supports its types. In short, peertube is an accessible
         | way for users to publish their videos to activitypub.
        
           | rapnie wrote:
           | Yes, Owncast [0] is another example of a media app that is in
           | the process of adding ActivityPub protocol support [1] and
           | become part of the Fediverse. I hope they'll be largely
           | compatible in the way they implemented their federation
           | support.
           | 
           | [0] https://owncast.online/
           | 
           | [1] https://github.com/owncast/owncast/tree/gek/activity-
           | pub-1
        
         | ShamelessC wrote:
         | > The channel in this post has 20 YouTube subscribers and no
         | more than a couple thousand total YouTube views.
         | 
         | ...that's quite a lot even on YouTube, no? I always assumed the
         | videos recommended for their sheer popularity were a "top 1%"
         | sort of situation.
        
           | spiderice wrote:
           | No, this is nowhere near a lot, even for small channels. Make
           | a quality video about something useful and there is a good
           | chance you get more views than this persons whole channel
        
         | Timpy wrote:
         | Maybe the idea of PeerTube is a lot nice than the user
         | experience? I can't say, I haven't tried PeerTube. I feel like
         | this is pretty common when it comes to avoiding big tech
         | though. When Github was bought out by Microsoft I went all in
         | on Gitlab, but alas, the company I work for now uses Github.
         | The sheer gravity of it pulled me back in.
        
           | maccolgan wrote:
           | The experience is fine, but PeerTube by definition is
           | decentralized, so measurements won't always be indicative of
           | usefulness...
        
         | 3gg wrote:
         | What exactly is your point? That it's inferior technology
         | because it's unpopular?
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | A lot of people see the usefulness of PeerTube but don't move
         | because the creators they watch are on YouTube. It's the same
         | for the creators, though - they can't move off of YouTube
         | entirely, because none of their viewers will go to a PeerTube
         | instance just to watch that one creator. Thus nobody moves to
         | PT unless there are other factors (like extremist creators
         | moving because their videos keep getting removed by YT).
         | 
         | Another major problem that prevents creators from hosting on
         | PeerTube is that there are no ads - many see direct-from-
         | YouTube revenue driven by Premium views/Ad views generate a
         | significant portion of their income. Even Linus Tech Tips, with
         | their audience of gamers who mostly running an ad blocker, sees
         | YouTube generate 26% of their profit[0], almost exactly as much
         | as they get from sponsors spots in their videos. If everyone
         | were to move to PT, we'd either need an intermediary for ads,
         | or only creators with audiences that could afford to personally
         | finance them (via Patreon or similar) would be able to survive
         | and make a living off of running their channel.
         | 
         | 0: https://youtu.be/-zt57TWkTF4?t=391
        
           | merth wrote:
           | just upload same videos to both platforms, people will come
           | slowly.
        
           | spijdar wrote:
           | This is my big pet peeve with people who describe Youtube's
           | demonetization policies as "censorship" and propose Peertube
           | as a replacement. I'm not going to get entangled in the
           | question of what responsibility big social media has and what
           | it should or shouldn't do about giving people platforms, but
           | I will say that if you believe demonetization and being de-
           | prioritized in youtube's discovery algorithms is being
           | deplatformed/censored, moving to a service that doesn't
           | really _have_ monetization or youtube-style content discovery
           | isn 't the solution.
           | 
           | If you move your content to PeerTube and want both an
           | audience and to be paid, you'll need a combination of third
           | party services and other social media, and will likely end up
           | with similar problems re: advertisers cutting out
           | "unacceptable content".
           | 
           | I do think it'd probably be better if the content provider
           | was divested from this layer and focused on only providing
           | media, but Peertube doesn't really solve these
           | social/economic problems people complain about with Youtube.
        
             | zelphirkalt wrote:
             | One way people could start is by uploading content on both,
             | Youtube and a PeerTube instance and mention their PeerTube
             | content in YouTube videos. This way they also create a kind
             | of online backup, in case YouTube's algorithms decide to
             | take them down.
        
               | belorn wrote:
               | If I am remembering right from linus tech tips, they are
               | not allowed to try get viewers to go to an other
               | platform. The are some ways one can indirect reference
               | other platforms, but videos intended to get people off
               | youtube is basically not allowed.
        
               | hendersoon wrote:
               | Linus and co founded Floatplane, which is explicitly
               | another platform competing with YouTube. It isn't very
               | successful, but they certainly did it.
               | 
               | https://www.floatplane.com/
        
               | dvdkon wrote:
               | Wasnt't that Twitch? They talk about Floatplane on YT
               | often enough.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | zelphirkalt wrote:
               | Oh my, I did not even know that. That's so toxic.
               | Shouldn't that fall under some kind of monopoly law?
        
               | spijdar wrote:
               | There are a number of prominent YouTubers who advertise
               | their own alternative platforms fairly regularly, if
               | "indirectly". There are also videos about LTT's own video
               | service Floatplane on YouTube [0]
               | 
               | I'm guessing that either there's some clause in the
               | YouTube partner/adsense program saying you can't just
               | redirect your viewers elsewhere or you can't upload
               | videos with the sole purpose of saying "go here for more
               | videos".
               | 
               | That said, I'd be interested to see the details of what
               | GP was talking about, because I believe it exists, I just
               | wonder what the exacts are.
               | 
               | [0] https://youtu.be/oOOOfZWXPu4
        
           | ngold wrote:
           | Only folks that can sustain themselves, like forgotten
           | weapons, are patreon supported. But you would have to create
           | a channel from the beginning to be patreon supported.
        
             | kbenson wrote:
             | It's not that you have to create the channel from the
             | beginning to be Patreon supported, but that you have to be
             | willing to forego the additional YouTube revenue even if
             | Patreon payment s become enough to support you.
        
           | tomComb wrote:
           | "It's the same for the creators, though - they can't move off
           | of YouTube entirely, because none of their viewers will go to
           | a PeerTube instance just to watch that one creator."
           | 
           | Is it so hard to be on both? Something I like about YouTube
           | compared to some other platforms is they never (to the best
           | of my knowledge) engage in exclusives or impose exclusivity
           | conditions. And even when they develop new features, I've
           | rarely seen Google try to restrict those.
        
         | rapnie wrote:
         | > Is PeerTube supremely unpopular (...), or am I missing
         | something?
         | 
         | One reason of seeming more inpopular than it actually is, lies
         | in that while there are many PeerTube instances, they are not
         | all federating together. They are selective and some are not
         | federating at all.
         | 
         | Also I am not sure if counting of views works all that well
         | yet, and Likes require either signing up to individual
         | instances, or spreading of video link via Mastodon to get liked
         | (via ActivityPub integration).
         | 
         | Both the federation and the level of integration with other
         | Fediverse apps is a work in progress and steadily improving.
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | PeerTube does not have enough bandwidth to work.
       | 
       | Try PeerTube. Here's a cat video. Posted 1 week ago, 38 views,
       | duration 10 seconds.
       | 
       | https://peertube.tv/w/tsvCimhEaLSTZD16B3gqBQ
       | 
       | Even as the only watcher, and with gigabit Internet both ways at
       | my end, it stuttered, then stalled completely.
       | 
       | For short videos, you'd be better off putting them on a shared
       | hosting site as .mp4 files.
       | 
       | Peer to peer video hosting is just not a good idea for bandwidth
       | reasons.
        
         | Popegaf wrote:
         | It's not P2P, it's federated. Anybody can host an instance and
         | probably that one has low bandwidth and isn't mirrored by other
         | instances.
         | 
         | Instances like https://tilvids.com/ or https://video.ploud.fr/
         | have better bandwidth.
        
         | rapnie wrote:
         | It also depends a lot on the remote instance, which can be
         | someone's personal PC on a low-bandwidth line. It sure helps if
         | there's more people seeding via the webtorrent integration. I
         | guess the latter will be more of a benefit once PeerTube
         | instances get more active users.
        
           | Animats wrote:
           | It's working better now, with 144 views. Do more views cause
           | more replication?
        
             | rapnie wrote:
             | I believe it is more simultaneous viewers that counts, and
             | they start to upload as well as download while watching
             | (and you can also opt-out of that).
        
         | ziml77 wrote:
         | Same experience here on that video.
        
         | sebastien_b wrote:
         | Ran fine for me first time.
        
         | yawaramin wrote:
         | Worked fine for me with maybe one stutter. Anyway, that's once
         | instance of PT, there are others. E.g. I've never noticed any
         | issues with https://watch.ocaml.org/
        
           | echlipse wrote:
           | Both the videos referenced above worked smoothly for me. I'm
           | on a 30 mbps cable Internet connection.
        
             | rnotaro wrote:
             | I guess it depends on the peers.
             | 
             | I have 600 down and it was still choppy on the first load.
        
       | zelphirkalt wrote:
       | 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 videos before they can be
       | found and a way of telling people, that they are responsible
       | themselves and have that accepted by law? And how do other
       | instance admins manage this? Does anyone here have that
       | experience?
        
       | dartharva wrote:
       | Odysee is functionally a much better Youtube alternative than
       | Peertube. Too bad it mostly acts like the Youtube equivalent of
       | Parler now.
        
       | criley2 wrote:
       | The primary motivation of most creators is to make money. What is
       | PeerTube paying per view? 0$?
       | 
       | Why would any creator spend all that time and money making
       | content to give away for free? Do you give away your daily work
       | for free? They can easily use something like Patreon or one of
       | the many pay-only tube sites if they're giving up on ads and
       | asking for donations/subscriptions/etc.
       | 
       | I mean, I'm not against the idea, it just seems to fundamentally
       | misunderstand why creators choose youtube. If Youtube paid
       | $0/1000 views... the majority of the top 1000 creators would be
       | gone overnight.
        
       | paulirish wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | hendersoon wrote:
       | I like that they let users disable uploads.
       | 
       | How do you get rid of the giant left column, other than zooming
       | way in?
        
       | aledalgrande wrote:
       | lol buffering on a 100Mb
        
         | mattl wrote:
         | Poor to poor
        
         | wizzwizz4 wrote:
         | Considering it's being hit by Hacker News, I'd say that's not
         | that bad.
        
           | LeoPanthera wrote:
           | If it's peer to peer, shouldn't more viewers be better?
        
             | Popegaf wrote:
             | It depends on the configuration of the server. Some disable
             | Webtorrent (probably because it doesn't support HLS). When
             | they do that then I think it pulls from the federation,
             | which then depends on how many have mirrored it.
        
               | wizzwizz4 wrote:
               | I didn't know it pulled from the federation at all!
               | That's interesting.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | smoldesu wrote:
       | Off topic, but the other day I switched to FreeTube (freetube.io)
       | and it's been quite nice. It's not a comprehensive YouTube client
       | (lacks true theming, plugins, etc.), it offers a lot of features
       | that will be helpful for people who want to use YouTube without
       | Google getting in the way.
        
       | varispeed wrote:
       | When using such federated platforms, do you leak your IP address
       | to other people viewing the content?
        
         | Popegaf wrote:
         | If WebRTC is activated in your browser and webtorrent
         | (https://webtorrent.io/) is being used by the instance, yes.
         | However, you could say the same for Zoom or most video calling
         | platform, if I'm not mistaken.
        
       | whitefirered wrote:
       | I like these types of video websites, but a huge reason they will
       | never beat YouTube is the age. YouTube has a huge abundance of
       | content that spans pretty far back. When you have that much
       | content its kinda hard to beat.
        
       | osigurdson wrote:
       | Step 1: Change the name.
        
       | prvc wrote:
       | Does distributed hosting really work for streaming video,
       | especially along "the long tail"?
        
       | petermcneeley wrote:
       | Why is the upload bytes always zero for me? (I would guess they
       | dont do NAT holepunch)
        
         | 3gg wrote:
         | I was wondering the same thing. Looks like the videos are
         | shared using WebRTC, which I have disabled in my browser.
        
           | Popegaf wrote:
           | WebTorrent (https://webtorrent.io/) is built upon WebRTC, but
           | I believe PeerTube should fallback to simple HTTP mp4. There
           | is a download link handy that you can open in the browser,
           | vlc, mpv or your favorite video player.
           | 
           | https://diode.zone/download/streaming-
           | playlists/hls/videos/b...
        
       | mattl wrote:
       | There's no peertube app for my devices --- I'm not going to watch
       | YouTube on my computer
        
       | mattl wrote:
       | Followed the link and clicked play and it stopped after one
       | second.
        
       | fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
       | One thing I really dislike about Fediverse services is that their
       | landing pages are always about joining/signing up. For Twitter-
       | like applications this might be ok. But for something like
       | YouTube, I definitely want to browse the content a bit before
       | signing up.
        
         | wizzwizz4 wrote:
         | > _One thing I really dislike about Fediverse services is that
         | their landing pages are always about joining /signing up._
         | 
         | That's because their "landing pages" (project advertisement
         | websites) aren't instances. The home page of any instance (e.g.
         | https://diode.zone/) will show you the content visible from
         | that instance.
        
           | fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
           | This isn't true of Mastodon or Pixelfed instances (or wasn't
           | when I tried running one).
           | 
           | But, if you're going to be called "join peertube" you need to
           | have the sort of content that makes people want to join: copy
           | about what peertube is + a list of instances isn't that.
        
             | wizzwizz4 wrote:
             | Most Mastodon instances have it a single click away from
             | the sign-up page. (But yes, I agree. Mastodon isn't great,
             | even though it's popular.)
        
               | FalconSensei wrote:
               | For many people 1 click (or even an entire screen scroll-
               | down) is too much. If PeerTube is supposed to be an
               | YouTube alternative, you need to see videos and a search
               | right away.
               | 
               | I know it's not an instance and blah-blah-blah, but those
               | are technical details that (possible) users don't give a
               | single F.
        
         | gargron wrote:
         | I've just opened the YouTube frontpage from a private window to
         | see what it's like. There is literally nothing on there I'd
         | want to click on. I think the value of YouTube is in 1) being
         | able to link to a video 2) subscribing to creators and having
         | them in your feed and 3) related videos. But none of that is
         | the kind of browsing around you can do from the frontpage.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-09-19 23:00 UTC)