[HN Gopher] PeerTube: Free software to take back control of your...
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PeerTube: Free software to take back control of your videos
Author : pmoriarty
Score : 177 points
Date : 2022-02-23 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (joinpeertube.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (joinpeertube.org)
| ziml77 wrote:
| If a video is unpopular, can it just disappear like a torrent
| that loses seeders? Or is there some mechanism to incentivize
| peers to hold on to videos that get like one view a month?
| Animats wrote:
| I've wondered about that. I put a video on PeerTube a few
| months ago.[1] It's a rendering test, of interest only to some
| people I'm working with. I'm curious to see how long it stays
| around and whether enough bandwidth is provided for streaming.
| So far, it's still up, despite very few views.
|
| [1] https://video.hardlimit.com/w/qBGD9LF8Ua3T7gLPCkE6vw
| HidyBush wrote:
| No, if an instance publishes a video it means that it has to
| host it as a webseed. The torrent mechanism kicks in only when
| the video is being accessed by multiple people at the same time
| mdoms wrote:
| I have tried to use PeerTube a number of times (when it comes up
| on HN, which it does very often). It is absolutely appalling in
| both usability (confusing, ugly and borderline hostile design)
| and technical (videos buffer constantly - this is table stakes
| for hosting video) aspects. I understand the appeal for
| uploaders, but I will never consider switching to PeerTube as a
| viewer. I won't even click a link to a PeerTube video because I
| know in advance it won't play properly.
| flerp wrote:
| Sounds like porn to me
| fullshark wrote:
| I was looking at this before and went to https://open.tube/ to
| explore the content to see how the community looked. The front
| page had a video of extreme violence on it and I never returned.
| Looking now the front page is mostly political flamebait.
|
| A real community growing on the back of this technology will
| require either YouTube screwing up royally or some sort of
| grassroots effort based on micro payments to content creators (as
| opposed to ads) I think.
| older wrote:
| https://tilvids.com/ is a better instance.
| dymk wrote:
| > The moral of the story is: if you're against witch-hunts, and
| you promise to found your own little utopian community where
| witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up
| consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians
| and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live
| even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Which is why breaking away from the centralized web sucks.
|
| Rumble, voat, parler, gab, even as I feel like the left has
| left me these days, these places still largely look like
| dumpster fires to me.
|
| The centralized web is awful. Getting away from it is awful.
|
| I don't know what's worse - the endless corporate censorship
| or the insanely explicit content, outright bigotry, and anti-
| science quacks who fill up spaces rebelling against it.
|
| My ethics says the Corp censorship is far more problematic
| (when taking in the big picture) , but as someone wanting to
| participate in a free and constructive community it leaves
| one with no where to go.
|
| Social media was a mistake. Allowing tech companies to become
| as big as they are were too.
| toyg wrote:
| _> The centralized web is awful. Getting away from it is
| awful._
|
| That's just because a significant amount of _people_ are
| awful. And now everyone is on the web, including the awful
| ones.
|
| It's not social media, it's us.
| ectopod wrote:
| It's both. Social media provides a positive feedback loop
| for awfulness.
| mistermann wrote:
| Maybe someone will eventually take this into
| consideration in their design.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I looked on Rumble to see the videos on the front page.
|
| Headline was:
|
| A Vivafrei video on Trudeau rescinding Emergency Orders Act
|
| Editors Picks were:
|
| Mudroom Remodel + Vacuum Charging
|
| Very old COFFE GRINDER restoration
|
| This Is Why They Did It, by Russell Brand
|
| Wife CHEATS, Wants CHILD SUPPORT For Illegitimate Daughter?
|
| In the News Section: Trudeau announces
| end of Emergencies Act Shaffer: Biden
| Telegraphing Ukraine Moves Trump: Biden's
| America is getting bum-rushed Ukrainians
| express support for state of emergency
|
| Viral Puppy gets super excited when it's
| time to open presents Mother cat adorably hugs
| & kisses her kitten Tired man & his puppies
| fall asleep together for nap time Woman
| hilariously struggles to fit balloons in her trunk
|
| Podcasts Freedom Fighters Forced Trudeau
| to Revoke The Emergency Powers Act Pfizer
| Withdraws Application for Covid-19 Vaccine in India
| Stand For Freedom: Why one gym owner pushed back against
| tyranny and now is running for Congress Saagar
| Enjeti CAUGHT LYING About Russia & Ukraine On Breaking
| Points The Dive With Jackson Hinkle
|
| So, apart from seeing a few folks that got cancelled like
| Dan Bongino, looks like Vimeo or Youtube. Where are the
| awful dumpter fires?
| wvh wrote:
| I think you summed it up quite well. At this moment, there
| does not seem to be a space between the corporate you-are-
| the-product mainstream and the weirdos with an agenda crowd
| at the edges for a person to just be, speak and think in a
| relatively free and neutral sense without ending up in some
| ulterior trap.
| dools wrote:
| Aren't you having a discussion on just such a platform?
|
| Also what can't you say on, say, Twitter that you want to
| say?
| krapp wrote:
| There _is_ no such space because there _can_ be no such
| space.
|
| If you want a community without bad actors, bigots,
| cranks, etc, then it has to have rules and moderation,
| which means censorship. If you want free speech, you're
| going to get the bigots, cranks and bad actors.
| "Speak(ing) and think(ing) in a relatively free and
| neutral sense without ending up in some ulterior trap"
| requires curation and tone policing, which is censorship.
| Otherwise, the bigots and the cranks are also free to
| speak and think in the same way as everyone else, ruin
| the community and drive everyone else away.
|
| You can't have your cake and eat it too, you have to pick
| one.
| mmastrac wrote:
| History is littered with failures when competitors catering to
| ejected parts of a community try to make it work. You can't
| start a site based on the rejects.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Tell that to Australia
| jka wrote:
| Meanwhile, history also rewards communities who support and
| listen to the underserved in order to improve collective
| wellbeing. You can build a movement based on inclusion.
| paxys wrote:
| More accurately, if you start a site based on the rejects
| then it will only contain the content and community that was
| rejected in the first place. You can probably succeed if you
| brand it specifically for that crowd, but don't expect anyone
| else to switch.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| absolutely - most people are clueless how much goes around
| keeping youtube free from abusers of all kind - its no joke
| raro11 wrote:
| I clicked and as you said, there is a lot of political video's
| and violence but also a shit ton of pedo-talk.
|
| Added it to my pihole. And now I need some feelgood or else I
| can't sleep tonight
| Shared404 wrote:
| > And now I need some feelgood or else I can't sleep tonight
|
| https://teddit.net/r/eyebleach :)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The problem with these decentralised platforms is that the
| first people to flock to them are the people who have been
| deplatformed by major services.
|
| Some services try to capitalize on that (Gab, Trump's Twitter)
| while others ignore the problem and end up destined to be
| abandoned by normal people.
|
| Large parts of the Mastodon network are filled with porn and
| alt-right accounts that got banned from Twitter. Youtube
| alternatives are quickly filled with conspiracy theories and
| other content even Youtube doesn't want its algorithm to push.
| Hell, even centralised services have this problem; DailyMotion
| is the last real Youtube alternative and these days it's mostly
| pirated content, from what I can tell.
|
| Until some major content providers switch, which they won't,
| because they'll lose their income, there won't be a transition
| to free software. I fear the Fediverse came about 10 years too
| late to be successful.
| zaik wrote:
| > Mastodon network are filled with porn and alt-right
| accounts that got banned from Twitter
|
| I did not notice this at all, even looking at the federated
| timeline.
| porkloin wrote:
| I really hope that activitypub and the federated web end up
| becoming the technologies that "win" out of all the nonsense that
| is "Web3", but the wildly successful monetization of traditional
| web platforms and the "different-but-more" monetization of the
| crypto-obsessed vision of Web3 are nearly impossible for
| platforms like Peertube and Mastodon to effectively win out
| against.
| waffle_maniac wrote:
| Having a stake in a protocol incentivizes adoption and rewards
| network participation.
|
| The average person doesn't buy stocks. This is a way for them
| to not be left behind by the elites.
| gue-ni wrote:
| This has nothing to do with Web3
| Jiejeing wrote:
| Indeed, as it is an open solution and a working product.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| And actually "web".
| indigochill wrote:
| I suspect the blockchain nonsense (which I refuse to let have
| the "Web3" title) will win out because there's so much
| commercial incentive and if there's one thing we've seen from
| the internet's history, it's that money and commercial interest
| accelerates adoption even when maybe it shouldn't.
|
| I also think federation has the Google conditioning of the
| mainstream working against it. The mainstream's been
| conditioned to think of the internet in terms of global
| platforms. Switching to interacting with smaller nodes is a
| paradigm shift that I don't believe most users are willing to
| make, especially given the benefits (like use of personal data
| and human-scale moderation) don't seem to matter to the
| majority given the apathy towards Facebook's and Google's
| business practices.
|
| That said, much like gopher still exists in parallel with HTTP,
| IMO it doesn't really matter which wins because the mainstream
| using one is not mutually exclusive with some of us using the
| other.
| russdpale wrote:
| I look through the listing of peers, and I don't see a single
| instance which trustworthy enough to devote my time too. For
| instance, checking the box "education" brings up a completely non
| sensible list that provides no context in which to make a
| judgement about the quality or character of the "tube".
|
| Also, this seems to have the same problem as mastodon, where I
| have to create an account for each tube, no thanks. Clicking
| "English" still brings up non english listings, furthering the
| difficulty of using the app.
|
| Good idea, poor execution.
| indigochill wrote:
| > Also, this seems to have the same problem as mastodon, where
| I have to create an account for each tube, no thanks.
|
| Creating an account per node is federation working as intended.
| The idea is that this is then your identity across the network,
| the same way that you create an email address with an email
| provider that then lets you send email to users using other
| email providers. Each node should then network with other nodes
| to provide its users access to videos from nodes it trusts
| (same as Mastodon does - you don't have to be on the same node
| as a user you follow as long as your node networks with their
| node). The trust model is centered around your trust of the
| admin of a particular node, which brings a more human scale to
| the tech (particularly as compared to something like YouTube).
|
| Federation is coming back into vogue particularly now as a
| reaction to the Facebook/Google problem where a single entity
| collects all the data about all users of the platform and can
| unilaterally ban a user with no recourse. In a federated
| network a node decides what other nodes it federates with and
| so self-regulates. But email is an example of federated
| technology everyone uses.
| grumbel wrote:
| > Creating an account per node is federation working as
| intended.
|
| I call that broken by design. Having your identity tied to a
| server means somebody else controls it. Email has the same
| problem, if GMail changes the ways it handles emails and
| makes a provider switch necessary, tough luck, you now have
| to tell everybody that you are moving to a new sever and your
| email/identity changed.
|
| Just using a GPG key to represent your identity or something
| along those lines would be a much better way to handle it.
| seanhunter wrote:
| > Just using a GPG key to represent your identity or
| something along those lines would be a much better way to
| handle it.
|
| This is something the web3 world is moving towards a user-
| friendly solution for[1]. A web3 wallet (something like
| metamask which is a browser extension) actually holds a
| public/private key pair. Websites can authenticate by
| asking the user to "connect their wallet"[2] which actually
| means signing a message which the site can validate. To do
| this, the browser extension shows a popup showing the
| relevant bits of the request with "Approve" and "Reject"
| buttons. Once signed you are able to use the facilities of
| whatever website even though you don't have any sort of
| account. If at a later stage I want to revoke my approval I
| can just do that in my wallet - I don't even need to go to
| the site and there is of course no account to delete there.
| You can easily maintain multiple distinct personas because
| a wallet can contain multiple "accounts".[3]
|
| Something similar might presumably work for the fediverse.
| No accounts just an identity service/API that allows sites
| to get your public key and ask you to verify things by
| signing with the private key.
|
| [1] I say moving towards because there are plenty of rough
| edges, but the basic idea is pretty good and the UX is
| already streets ahead of the normal GPG
| verification/signing type workflows
|
| [2] There is an API called "walletConnect" and as long as
| wallets and sites implement that, they are able to
| interoperate fairly seamlessly (in theory). In practise it
| doesn't always work that great.
| https://docs.walletconnect.com/
|
| [3] These are actually an address and a keypair. The
| address is used to perform transactions on the blockchain
| so wouldn't be relevant to the fediverse I wouldn't think.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| Another issue is that if you choose the wrong node and they
| decide to shut down for some reason, you lose all your
| content.[1] There has already been precedent for this.[2]
| All it takes is being out of the loop for too long and
| missing a message announcing a shutdown/migration to lose
| your data. In practice this makes the largest nodes the
| most appealing for registering an account since their
| popularity gives you the highest chance of your data living
| on, which defeats the point of decentralization.
|
| Also, if you're Twitter, you can afford lawyers and
| moderators to clean up illicit content. If you're operating
| a Mastodon instance, that responsibility falls on you. It's
| simply a question of who has more capital, human resources,
| and free time.[3]
|
| Twitter being centralized means that it's unlikely that
| Twitter will go away in the long term. That's what would
| make me choose Twitter over a Mastodon instance if I wanted
| a public archive of something. I have to wonder what would
| happen if content of more and more importance started to be
| hosted on the Fediverse if it was subject to link rot from
| the nature of federalization.
|
| [1] https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/10305
|
| [2] https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/103295961293741634
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14290985
| hannasanarion wrote:
| > Federation is coming back into vogue particularly now as a
| reaction to the Facebook/Google problem where a single entity
| collects all the data about all users of the platform and can
| unilaterally ban a user with no recourse. In a federated
| network a node decides what other nodes it federates with and
| so self-regulates. But email is an example of federated
| technology everyone uses.
|
| I swear I read this exact sentence back in 2017 when Mastodon
| first came out with a splash and it has only gotten less
| relevant in the five years since.
| indigochill wrote:
| > it has only gotten less relevant in the five years since
|
| What does "relevant" mean? Hacker News is irrelevant to
| people who aren't into the tech scene. Mastodon is
| irrelevant if someone doesn't care about federation, but
| for those of us who do, it's still as relevant as ever.
|
| Neither Hacker News nor federation (I expect) are going to
| take over the world, but they have their respective
| audiences.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| > Neither Hacker News nor federation (I expect) are going
| to take over the world, but they have their respective
| audiences.
|
| You see how this is at odds with the claim that
| federation is "in vogue", right?
|
| Federation is a small and shrinking niche. It had a brief
| moment in 2017, and has been in recession ever since.
| naasking wrote:
| What is the evidence of this recession?
| hannasanarion wrote:
| What is the evidence that it's "in vogue"?
|
| The only major events in the fediverse from the last
| several years to have any cultural impact is the rise of
| federated porn after the Tumblr exodus, and the rise in
| federated white nationalist forums after Trump got banned
| from Twitter. The fact that federation is becoming
| popular among pornographers and fascists is certainly not
| backing up the assertion that federation is "in vogue".
| altantiprocrast wrote:
| Is it really shrinking? Mastodon gained 950k users in
| 2021, combining with other platforms they probably gained
| over a million.
|
| https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2021/12/mastodon-
| recap-2021/
|
| Projects like Matrix.org are also seeing huge growth. Of
| course these are nothing on FAANG scale, but still far
| from shrinking.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Of those 950,000 sign-ups, only 814 users remained active
| according to the very same page you linked.
|
| That's not a cultural wave, that's a fad more swingy than
| gym memberships in January. "Vogue" technologies don't
| have a 99.93% churn rate.
| [deleted]
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Well you know, without the "back" part of "coming back"
| russdpale wrote:
| "Creating an account per node is federation working as
| intended."
|
| Ok well that isn't convenient, like at all. So it's basically
| a non starter for me.
|
| "Federation is coming back into vogue"
|
| Federation is absolutely not in vogue, and never has been
| vogue. Not even close to it. Where in the world did you get
| that idea?
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| I wish there was a site that uses videos hosted on Youtube, but
| with a better, (community curated?) reccomandation algorithm.
|
| Kinda like reddit, but the subreddits are topic "channels" that
| you can watch.
| mistermann wrote:
| Or even a service that had some sort of ontological tagging of
| channels and videos, that also _reliably_ notified you when new
| videos are released on your subscribed channels.
|
| Would this be vulnerable to a legal attack from Google?
| ZetaZero wrote:
| When I search for a video, it tries to launch a popup window for
| another domain (sepiasearch.org) which Firefox blocks. Seems
| confusing for a typical viewer
| mdoms wrote:
| And then if you click on one of the search results it will open
| in yet another popup with yet another weird domain with some
| oddball TLD like .win which looks even more sketchy.
| onebot wrote:
| I hate to say it but brand, ui, ux really matter in terms of
| first impressions and overall "love" of a product. I wish they
| would put more work in branding and ux on their website to make
| it appear more appealing and professional.
| HidyBush wrote:
| This is just the project's web page, the UI and UX of the
| actual hosted instances is pretty good in my opinion
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Putting things on a peer network is the very definition of
| _losing_ control of your videos. Once something 's p2p, can't
| ever be modified or taken down.
|
| It's a great value prop for pirates who want easy access to
| illegal movies and trolls who want their inflammatory opinions to
| ruffle feathers forever, but it's a pretty lousy deal for
| everyone else.
| jka wrote:
| Can you see any ways in which uploading your videos to one of a
| (very) small number of market-leading platforms could be
| problematic, in contrast?
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Certainly. But one thing that they definitely do, and that
| p2p hosting does not, is give people control of their videos,
| which is what this headline is claiming.
| jka wrote:
| Ok, thanks - I'm more ambivalent about the situation: I
| think it can be unclear, and can depend on people's
| perspectives regarding privacy and control, and the
| behaviours of the platforms and software available (all of
| which can be culture, context and chronology sensitive).
|
| Perhaps the existence of different options at the moment is
| necessary until there's (ever?) any consensus on a
| satisfying unified technology and sharing model for
| content.
|
| (if this seems confusing, please consider: it's not a
| technological absolute that use of a peer-to-peer platform
| means that you have to share your content with everyone; it
| can be a choice if the technology caters for it)
| imwillofficial wrote:
| You can control how they are shared, if at all.
|
| It's not a binary choice.
|
| I run a self hosted instance and don't share anything with
| anyone.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| That's a feature. Youtube (read Google) should not be the
| global police on what videos are allowed.
|
| Yes, what is posted on the internet can not be taken back. That
| has always been and remains true.
|
| No, I don't think piracy/trolls/whatever needs peertube, they
| do just fine without it now.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| But that's not what this headline is claiming. It's claiming
| that PeerTube will give _you_ control of _your_ videos. That
| 's the one thing that p2p services do not and cannot ever do.
| Putting content on p2p is synonymous with giving up control
| of it forever.
| eitland wrote:
| On YouTube you cannot control anything:
|
| - YouTube can remove it
|
| - people can store offline copies
|
| On Peertube at least YouTube can't take it down which means
| you have more control over it.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| You don't think that youtube channels have the ability to
| take down or edit their own videos?
|
| What exactly do you think "control" means?
| betwixthewires wrote:
| This argument is weaksauce. Putting anything publicly on
| the internet immediately means relinquishing control of it.
| P2P has nothing to do with that.
|
| "Take back control" is geared towards _hosts_. You can run
| your own tube site. That 's what the slogan is talking
| about.
|
| Also, peertube is no more p2p than bitchute. It uses webRTC
| to offload server load onto clients for popular videos,
| that's it.
| waffle_maniac wrote:
| When I run 'youtube-dl' on your YouTube video will you live in
| fear for the rest of your life?
| hannasanarion wrote:
| No, but youtube-dl isn't being marketed at video owners as a
| way to "take back control of your videos".
| xmprt wrote:
| I've deleted/privated/unlisted a few cringy YouTube videos
| from about 10 years ago. I have fairly high confidence that
| even in the insanely rare case that my other videos become
| popular or I become a celebrity, no one will find those old
| videos. That's not possible with a P2P service.
| amelius wrote:
| This is not about controlling which videos are taken down. This
| is about controlling that video's can't be taken down.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| The headline is "take back control of YOUR videos".
|
| Videos that you downloaded from other people aren't yours.
| You might own a copy, but that's no different from any other
| system of distribution. The difference between p2p and
| standard distribution is that the owner _loses_ control.
| [deleted]
| infogulch wrote:
| Who owns it when it's on YouTube?
|
| "The people who can destroy a thing, they control it." -
| Dune
|
| Google owns it.
|
| With peertube and the like, maybe you don't own it, but at
| least Google doesn't either.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| > With peertube and the like, maybe you don't own it,
|
| _Then why are they advertising with the slogan "take
| back control"???_
| infogulch wrote:
| Maybe the answer would be more clear if you read the end
| of that quote.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| And maybe you would understand why that statement makes
| absolutely no sense if you read the headline of this
| thread.
|
| It doesn't say "take control away from Youtube and
| Google", it says _take back control of your videos_. p2p
| is the _ultimate_ destruction of control, that 's the
| entire point of it. Saying that peertube gives you
| control is like saying that playing a slot machine gives
| you ROI.
| altantiprocrast wrote:
| > owner loses control
|
| the owner retains control of distributing their voice
| without a major platform getting in the way
| hannasanarion wrote:
| The owner retains control of nothing. From the instant
| you first seed to p2p, there is nothing you can do
| anymore to change what might happen next. You completely
| lose all agency over your own material. That is not
| "control".
|
| If you want to get off a platform, you can do that with a
| website. You don't need to give up editorial and
| retractive control forever (which you must do in order to
| use p2p, which is why this headline is so wrong) just to
| step off a platform.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > It's a great value prop for pirates who want easy access to
| illegal movies and trolls who want their inflammatory opinions
| to ruffle feathers forever, but it's a pretty lousy deal for
| everyone else.
|
| Not _everyone_ else; it 's a good deal for anyone who wants
| their content to be censorship-resistant, which is _not_ just
| trolls and pirates.
| karmanyaahm wrote:
| > can't ever be modified or taken down.
|
| > but it's a pretty lousy deal for everyone else
|
| Is it really a lousy deal for anyone who doesn't agree with
| YouTube/Facebook/Twitter's moderation (political or otherwise)?
|
| Or do you think that everyone the big platforms disagree with
| are 'trolls who want their inflammatory opinions'?
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Why in the world would someone who wants "control" of their
| content use p2p instead of youtube?
|
| If you're worried about platform censorship, the solution
| that gives you more control is to self-host, not to
| completely resign all editorial power for the rest of
| eternity by handing your content over to a peer network.
|
| p2p doesn't give you control of content, it takes away all
| control of content by ossifying it as-is.
| hidudeurcool wrote:
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-02-23 23:00 UTC)