[HN Gopher] What 2023 will bring for PeerTube
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What 2023 will bring for PeerTube
Author : booteille
Score : 244 points
Date : 2023-02-08 14:13 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (joinpeertube.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (joinpeertube.org)
| neonsunset wrote:
| It's nice to see PeerTube keeping going, it's quite an important
| project in the long run, always providing the opportunity to spin
| up your own instance for videohosting, and "peer" too. Here
| federation is actually a more useful model when compared to
| deeply flawed fediverse in its use case.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| PeerTube uses ActivityPub, it is _part_ of the fediverse. You
| can comment on a video using a Mastodon account.
| neonsunset wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you for the correction though.
| capableweb wrote:
| Fediverse is exactly what you were saying when you said
| "Here federation is actually a more useful model", it is
| federated.
| hnarn wrote:
| Two comments in and still not a word on what is "flawed"
| about the fediverse.
| hgsgm wrote:
| I'm guessing they are interpreting "fediverse" as a
| federated implementation of a global clique like Twitter
| where everyone wants to connect to everyone, instead of
| only their friends/followees
| [deleted]
| unixhero wrote:
| More speed, more content!
| peppermint_gum wrote:
| I have one problem with PeerTube: its P2P architecture makes the
| users legally liable for the content they're watching, because
| they aren't just _watching_ , they are also automatically sharing
| it.
|
| Of course, Torrent has the same problem but I think in that case
| people are more aware of it.
| cuillevel3 wrote:
| It's already happening with fascist propaganda:
| https://joinpeertube.org/news/isd-study
| somecompanyguy wrote:
| my guess is a massive propaganda campaign demonizing peertube
| CharlesW wrote:
| Given some of the content I've seen on PeerTube, PeerTube
| becoming popular would be the end of PeerTube.
| jrmg wrote:
| What is that screenshot of 'Morning Affairs' to 'Embark' meant to
| show?
|
| Related, that's probably not the best picture to show if they're
| going for mainstream acceptance. I suspect it's probably a pretty
| sedate video actually, so the author of the post just didn't
| think about how it looked, but just choosing something with less
| apparent nakedness would probably give a better first impression
| if PeerTube is going for a widespread audience.
| jrm4 wrote:
| In a very odd way, I almost want Youtube to screw up something
| big to shine some light here, a la Twitter/Mastodon. Get these
| things rolling!
| wongarsu wrote:
| Youtube semi-regularly screws up in ways that makes the
| creators fear for their channel and audience, and makes them
| evaluate alternatives. The "problem" is that youtube never
| really screws up on the content consumer side, so viewers have
| little reason to ever go to any of these altnernatives (unless
| it's paid bonus content on patreon).
|
| Though I guess I could see some channels that are too heavily
| restricted on youtube using peertube as a repository of _all_
| videos, and youtube for the videos that youtube currently deems
| acceptable enough.
| somecompanyguy wrote:
| [flagged]
| seanw444 wrote:
| As well as guntubers. You're not allowed to show assembly, or
| even disassembly, of firearms really anymore. Who needs to
| amend the Constitution when the institutions can simply erase
| knowledge and experience on exercising the rights therein.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Just like with Mastodon created because of the 2013 Twitter
| APIpocalypse, YouTube have been screwing things up big for at
| least 14 years now, and PeerTube as it exists now is at least
| partially the result of those actions :
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/01/youtubes-january-fair-...
|
| (To be fair there also was that Viacom et al. lawsuit for $1
| billion in damages...)
| nicce wrote:
| I doesn't matter much since there is no money involved in
| alternatives. Google pays for content creators. A lot.
| Decentralisation is likely removing all compensations and
| people stop pushing content for money.
| jrm4 wrote:
| To which I say, GOOD.
|
| I'm 100% convinced that NOTHING of significant value would be
| lost if the revenue that Youtube pays directly were to go
| away. It would be a rough transition period, but pure-ads
| just doesn't make anything good. Patreon-style is ideal, but
| Netflix is fine too.
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| General question, why haven't nefarious actors used PeerTubes
| technology to launch their own non-censorable channels/videos?
| I'm talking ISIS tier.
| schoolornot wrote:
| IPFS would be welcome:
| https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/494
| ehutch79 wrote:
| I'm getting certificate errors. This is a giant red flag to me.
| frostiness wrote:
| Are you sure you're not on a network that may be blocking the
| site? I had the same issue but it went away once I connected to
| a VPN.
| aendruk wrote:
| What errors?
| ehutch79 wrote:
| NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID
|
| It's showing as some kind of cicso cert valid for a couple of
| days.
|
| There's no interception on this network. Other let's encrypt
| certs work just fine.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| For which domain? joinpeertube.org or one of the video hosting
| nodes?
|
| Use Qualys [1] to test the domain in question to link here or
| use the testssl.sh [2] code _only depends on openssl and bash_
| to test from your machine. If one of the many self hosted
| nodes, see if you can find a way to reach out to them and
| kindly suggest they set up certbot or a cron job to renew their
| certs.
|
| Joinpeertube.org looks good to me [3] so I assume you find a
| self-hosted node that needs some attention.
|
| If someone here knows of a way to query a list of all the self-
| hosted domains joined into peertube perhaps we could run
| testssl.sh against all of them to generate reports. I am not
| opposed to doing this if someone knows how I can get a list of
| all the domains using curl.
|
| [1] - https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/
|
| [2] - https://github.com/drwetter/testssl.sh
|
| [3] -
| https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=joinpeertube....
| ehutch79 wrote:
| joinpeertube.org
|
| Clicking on the HN link, as a user how would I know this is
| to be expected? or that it's one random node?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Joinpeertube.org is not a random node, however that site
| links to many random nodes for the videos. One may or may
| not realize when they click on a video that they are on a
| new domain unless they glance at the URL bar. That is why I
| was looking for clarification.
|
| If you are experiencing issues on joinpeertube.org then it
| may be worth running an OS update and ensuring you also
| have the latest version of your browser to rule out CA
| certificate store issues. CA stores are periodically
| updated and LetsEncrypt did go through a change that will
| eventually invalidate its older signing keys and
| intermediate certificates. This would only impact people
| that have stagnant operating systems or browsers unless one
| is being routed through an outdated MitM _Man-in-the-
| Middle_ HTTPS proxy.
|
| We may be able to rule out MitM with openssl, see if the
| fingerprint is the same for you. openssl
| s_client -servername joinpeertube.com -connect
| joinpeertube.com:443 < /dev/null 2>/dev/null | openssl x509
| -fingerprint -noout -in /dev/stdin SHA1 Fingerprint
| =C0:4E:F2:F6:EA:2B:72:C5:84:E0:73:2C:2C:2B:BB:FB:A1:34:C8:2
| 0
| _ache_ wrote:
| I don't. It a basic Let's Encrypt certificate. It comes from
| you side.
| college_physics wrote:
| As always the French locale means there is a bit of language
| barrier for the English speaking world, but framasoft supports a
| whole host of interesting "fediverse" projects. I would maybe
| single out mobilizon [0] as most intriguing. It is "simply" about
| communities organizing events in a decentralized way.
|
| [0] https://mobilizon.fr/
| _ache_ wrote:
| Humm, I can't see a thing that is not translated to _at least_
| english. Not sure about the language barrier.
| college_physics wrote:
| once you start digging into frama forums, repos etc its a
| more colorful picture. To be clear, I am not complaining:
| steamrolling the world into a monoculture is not my idea of a
| good online society, just saying that the impact of some open
| source organizations like framasoft on tech might have been
| higher had there not been a linguistic friction to overcome.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| "Impact on tech" doesn't just mean "impact on Silicon
| Valley". Framasoft has been plenty influential in Europe,
| and a decent chunk of that has been _because_ they 're not
| just another anglophonic "international" (United States)
| software house.
| college_physics wrote:
| I am with you, but some humility on the face of current
| tech reality won't hurt, it might just help identify
| structural obstacles and how to overcome them. E.g., we
| are exchanging those views on a "Silicon Valley" platform
| - if there ever was one. There is nothing remotely
| equivalent to HN in Europe, primarily (I think) because
| of linguistic frictions.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| https://joinmobilizon.org/en/
| abcc8 wrote:
| I'm wondering how they plan to get decent content. I just
| searched two of my interests, climbing and canoeing, and only a
| handful of uninteresting videos popped up. Are there specific
| topics that have engaging communities on the site?
| kevincox wrote:
| Just like YouTube most content is crap. Maybe the bigger
| problem is that searching on any one instance will only search
| a small subset of the content available.
|
| But it is mostly a discovery problem. Once you have found a
| channel that you like it is easy to follow via RSS or
| ActivityPub. I would love to see discovery services built on
| top of PeerTube, it seems natural to separate the viewing
| infrastructure from the recommendation service.
| tsgagnon wrote:
| _Just like YouTube most content is crap._
|
| There is a huge difference between "there is lots of crap
| content to wade through to get to the good content" and "I
| can't find content that isn't crap". My foray into Peertube
| over the years is that the latter is much closer than the
| former.
| JoshCole wrote:
| Quality is a function of effort. Effort has a cost. The
| typical cost for high quality is high effort.
|
| A content creator producing quality content has spent a lot
| of money in order to produce the high quality content. How
| much? Estimates from YouTube creators who are currently in
| the top creators get us numbers like $25,000-$1,000,000 per
| video. If they do not reliably make more than that much from
| trying to produce at that quality, they cannot survive while
| doing so.
|
| So a larger problem than content discovery is that by default
| people producing quality content will die.
| booteille wrote:
| You can also use https://sepiasearch.org/ to find content
| across most instances.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| That's like asking how Signal plans on getting nice people to
| talk to. Peertube is just a self-hosted platform that allows
| for bandwidth-efficient video sharing, it's up to the single
| instance owners to care about publicizing their stuff.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Publicizing isn't the challenge. Monetizing is.
| mariusor wrote:
| Why do you think that monetizing is more of a challenge
| when you own the platform that you publish on?
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| It's open source. You could put Google Adsense API calls in
| every nook and cranny of the platform if you like. Or any
| other ad provider, for the matter
| jehb wrote:
| I understand your point, but it's worth pointing out that
| for many of us, "difficult to monetize" is a feature, not a
| bug.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Based on the Mastodon experience (very quiet outside of small
| niches until mid last year) you'll probably have to wait til
| Youtube self-destructs.
| hgsgm wrote:
| It's different. Most people on Twitter are there to promote
| their ideas and themselves, not get paid. So free syndication
| is fine for them. Most popular/quality YouTube content is
| there because the creator wants to get paid, not to spread
| their ideas.
| skybrian wrote:
| Much of the content I watch on YouTube consists of obscure
| music videos where nobody is getting paid (or maybe they
| have a Patreon), but having someone else host your videos
| for free is still a pretty good deal.
| rsynnott wrote:
| ... I mean, I think 99.99% of people are on twitter to have
| fun, not promote themselves. (Also some of the remainder
| are on twitter specifically to moan about bad customer
| service; it's surprising how many accounts you we
| apparently used solely for this).
|
| Similarly, most people on YouTube are not expecting to
| strike it big with videos of their cat, or their hobby
| project, or whatever.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| As a Brit I love the idea of a video service just for the titled
| and ennobled.
|
| May I ask - do the non-peers get any access at all? Even perhaps
| as a degraded, low resolution service? If so, I'd like to know
| where to register my disapproval.
| phillc73 wrote:
| If you do not wish to watch videos of fox hunting, Mayfair
| house parties and Etonian high jinks, then commons-tube is for
| you.
| omginternets wrote:
| Sir, I believe it is called "RubeTube".
| nelele wrote:
| [dead]
| TomK32 wrote:
| Don't forget the Boat Race and Royal Ascot. I just hope they
| won't let the likes of John Oliver onto PeerTube.
| toyg wrote:
| These days, a Lords-oriented tube site would actually be full
| of videos on how to raise money for friends and family
| without attracting scrutiny, or to sycophant your way to the
| top of a political party - the primary qualifications of
| modern peers.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Spectacular. Also, if you are a Lord, the resolution is 1080p,
| from there it gets scaled up so Viscount, Earl etc up to you
| have to be a Duke or minor royal to get 4k.
|
| Audio could be auto dubbed into received pronunciation and any
| food onscreen automatically replaced by deepfaked cucumber
| sandwiches.
| [deleted]
| EGreg wrote:
| When Simon Cowell on Britain's Got Talent used to ask "peers,
| what do you think?" I thought he was asking his fellow judges.
| But no! He was asking Piers Morgan!
| fredsmith219 wrote:
| Fox hunts are paywalled, though.
| aeharding wrote:
| Nice seeing this on the top of HN, lucky timing, I was just
| browsing code/blogposts etc last night and ended up donating
| EUR30. I've been toying with the software and I've been pretty
| impressed.
|
| I'd like to see an invite-based signup option like Mastodon, but
| other than that, it's a nice roadmap!
|
| Edit: Created an idea post:
| https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/posts/139/invite-links-to-cre...
| raybb wrote:
| Finally, I love that they've created https://peer.tube/ to
| showcase good content on PeerTube. Discoverability has been quite
| a challenge.
|
| Also, remote transcoding of videos seems like a huge win! Makes
| it so you won't need as beefy as a system to run PeerTube.
|
| I wonder why FOSDEM doesn't use PeerTube to host their videos.
| nodja wrote:
| > Also, remote transcoding of videos seems like a huge win!
| Makes it so you won't need as beefy as a system to run
| PeerTube.
|
| You can technically do it if you're willing to hack around.
| Since it uses the ffmpeg binary you could technically replace
| it with rffmpeg[1], the setup isn't pretty but it's doable. I
| haven't done it myself but have seen reddit posts on the
| jellyfin community that it works pretty well once setup.
|
| [1] https://github.com/joshuaboniface/rffmpeg
| codetrotter wrote:
| > I wonder why FOSDEM doesn't use PeerTube to host their
| videos.
|
| I didn't watch any of their videos yet this year, but perhaps
| the thing they are using to host their videos is something they
| have built on their own, before PeerTube even existed? And so
| if what they have works then that's a good reason to stick to
| using that.
| sschueller wrote:
| Cool, I hope they keep it "safe for play store review". I have
| had to run my own server in order to get the client[1] I wrote
| to pass play store reviews.
|
| [1] https://github.com/sschueller/peertube-android
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| This guy has implemented a mind-boggling amount of features in
| these years basically all alone and funded with a modest tech
| salary.
|
| Just goes to show how much potential small teams or even
| individuals have that gets wasted in big corpos.
| college_physics wrote:
| Yes. This almost makes you giggle with excitement about what
| sort of potential has accumulated around web technologies when
| used creatively and with purpose.
|
| Self-hosting is still not quite as easy as it could have been,
| though.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| I feel like this relates right back to the recent wave of
| layoffs.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| While extremely impressive, we shouldn't forget the support
| that Framasoft provides him, and that he's building upon
| WebTorrent software and Fediverse protocols.
| rglullis wrote:
| It also shows how the web (and technology in general) would be
| a lot better for us if we decided to support these people just
| a little bit, instead of letting ourselves be exploited by Big
| Tech in exchange of "free" stuff.
| tsgagnon wrote:
| _It also shows how the web (and technology in general) would
| be a lot more better for us if we decided to support these
| people just a little bit, instead of letting ourselves be
| exploited by Big Tech in exchange of "free" stuff._
|
| The biggest issue with Peertube/Youtube is related to
| creators and how they get paid for content they create.
|
| Youtube has an avenue for that to happen, and Peertube
| doesn't, or at least in a way that works.
|
| Unless Peertube wants to just be "the place you host your
| videos from other platforms as a backup" something would have
| to be done.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Youtube of ~15 years ago was mostly just Joe Randoms making
| videos to amuse themselves or others, not trying to make a
| career out of it. The videos were less polished but also
| less soulless. This sort of content could thrive on
| peertube, they don't have to win over the "influence
| career" people.
| tsgagnon wrote:
| _This sort of content could thrive on peertube, they don
| 't have to win over the "influence career" people._
|
| But this isn't 15 years ago. There wasn't a huge player
| in this space when Youtube was getting started, but now
| there is. And now people know it's theoretically possible
| to make decent money creating content.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| How many YouTubers, as a percentage of total users,
| actually get paid a living wage by doing work on YouTube?
| I'd assume that it's not many.
|
| The ones that do aren't surviving on YouTube ad revenue
| alone since the adpocalypse. They're doing so based on ad
| reads and crowdfunding, both of which work on Peertube just
| fine.
|
| The only thing keeping them on YouTube is audience reach.
| dualboot wrote:
| It's a very large ocean at this point, so while the
| percentages are small -- the number is quite large.
| rglullis wrote:
| The way to solve this, much like the way to solve R&D for
| open source, is to educate consumers to pay to creators and
| to eschew ad-funded business.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Has that ever worked?
| rglullis wrote:
| On what scale are you talking about?
|
| There are certainly plenty of stories of people who
| produce content funded directly by their audience, but
| none of them to match the money made by the top
| Youtubers.
| amalcon wrote:
| "Educate" means to transfer skills and information, not
| to increase the likelihood that people behave in a
| certain way. The value-neutral term for the latter is
| "influence".
|
| I'm a bit glib here, but the distinction is actually
| important. The ad industry, in particular, tends to use
| "educate" when it means "influence."
| rglullis wrote:
| I do believe though that it is a matter of _education_.
| The absolute majority of people have no idea how the
| sausage of social media content is made.
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