5 ms·

I think the bigger issue is that certain companies have near monopolies in their spaces to start with. For plebs like myself, youtube is really the only viable

I think the bigger issue is that certain companies have near monopolies in their spaces to start with. For plebs like myself, youtube is really the only viable option I have to distribute video media if I hope to build an audience. The fact that you effectively can't mount an alternative to facebook, youtube, etc due to network effects is the larger disease, and this is one of many symptoms.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Agreed. If competition exists, customer service is one of the angles competitors can improve on to try to gain customers. For instance, one of the top reasons I prefer FastMail over Gmail is that real customer service I get.
the8472 9y ago
I think the only solution is a distributed and decentralized web. Distributed hosting of static content is a sorta-solved problem. But curating, linking and discoverability (which require mutating content) is a lot harder due to the trust anchor problem.
- stephen82 9y ago
  Your suggestion exists and has a name: bitchute. I will paste here what they have for "About" at the end of their main page: BitChute is a peer to peer content sharing platform. Our mission is to put people and free speech first. It is free to join, create and upload your own content to share with others. Feel free to read more about it in their FAQ. I really want to stop using YouTube and use this instead. I hope they make it. https://www.bitchute.com/ https://www.bitchute.com/
  - the8472 9y ago
    Webtorrent does not meet the distributed requirement since webrtc needs signalling servers. Plus the discovery component is still hosted on websites subject to the networking effect.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    The big challenge with this is to solve the problem that almost everyone has a "one step too far" when it comes to what type of content we are willing to tolerate and/or what type of content we may get in trouble for hosting even if it is not intentional. That makes it tricky to for solutions that "put people and free speech first" to succeed, because they've basically painted a giant target on themselves, and it easily makes even a lot of people that sympathise in principle worried about the bits and pieces that steps over their personal line. Figuring out a reasonable solution to this, I think, will be essential to get more widespread adoptions of platforms like these.
    - the8472 9y ago
      I think the problem is the expectation of people that someone else do the filtering for them. I.e. "I don't want to see this kind of content" leads to "someone else should remove it from all the sites I visit". Which obviously leads to conflicting requirements once you have more than one person and those people disagree on what they want to see and don't want to see. The only reasonable solution is to host everything, modulo requirements by law, and give users the tools to locally filter out content en masse. In a decentralized system you also skip the law requirements since you cannot enforce multiple incompatible jurisdictions at the platform level, individual users will be responsible for enforcing it on their own nodes, similar how all you can do when accidentally encountering child porn is to clear your cache.
      - djrogers 9y ago
        > I.e. "I don't want to see this kind of content" leads to "someone else should remove it from all the sites I visit". I don’t think that’s always the mindset. Isn’t it reasonable for people to have the mindset of “I want to go to sites that don’t have content that I find objectionable”? This way websites can decide which group of people they want to cater to.
        the8472 9y ago
        The context of the discussion is large websites acting as platforms. Their users are bound to have conflicting views about what's "objectionable". So when the moderation mechanism is deletion instead of letting users just filter then the website has to preferentially treat one group instead of being a platform for everyone.
  - rmc 9y ago
    Warning: it has this channel https://www.bitchute.com/channel/whitepower/ https://www.bitchute.com/channel/whitepower/ which is full of anti-semitic nazi stuff. It's visible on the front page listed above. You may or may not want to visit that link. Channels aren't open to everyone, so it looks like they have manually allowed that?
- flamedoge 9y ago
  Webtorrent is another torrent based media sharing
- chongli 9y ago
  I think the only solution is a distributed and decentralized web. I love the idea but one problem: who pays for it? It's a special case of the co-operative vs corporation problem. Without an individual's starting capital, how do you get off the ground?

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

Agreed. If competition exists, customer service is one of the angles competitors can improve on to try to gain customers. For instance, one of the top reasons I prefer FastMail over Gmail is that real customer service I get.

the8472 9y ago

I think the only solution is a distributed and decentralized web. Distributed hosting of static content is a sorta-solved problem. But curating, linking and discoverability (which require mutating content) is a lot harder due to the trust anchor problem.

stephen82 9y ago
Your suggestion exists and has a name: bitchute. I will paste here what they have for "About" at the end of their main page: BitChute is a peer to peer content sharing platform. Our mission is to put people and free speech first. It is free to join, create and upload your own content to share with others. Feel free to read more about it in their FAQ. I really want to stop using YouTube and use this instead. I hope they make it. https://www.bitchute.com/ https://www.bitchute.com/
- the8472 9y ago
  Webtorrent does not meet the distributed requirement since webrtc needs signalling servers. Plus the discovery component is still hosted on websites subject to the networking effect.
- vidarh 9y ago
  The big challenge with this is to solve the problem that almost everyone has a "one step too far" when it comes to what type of content we are willing to tolerate and/or what type of content we may get in trouble for hosting even if it is not intentional. That makes it tricky to for solutions that "put people and free speech first" to succeed, because they've basically painted a giant target on themselves, and it easily makes even a lot of people that sympathise in principle worried about the bits and pieces that steps over their personal line. Figuring out a reasonable solution to this, I think, will be essential to get more widespread adoptions of platforms like these.
  - the8472 9y ago
    I think the problem is the expectation of people that someone else do the filtering for them. I.e. "I don't want to see this kind of content" leads to "someone else should remove it from all the sites I visit". Which obviously leads to conflicting requirements once you have more than one person and those people disagree on what they want to see and don't want to see. The only reasonable solution is to host everything, modulo requirements by law, and give users the tools to locally filter out content en masse. In a decentralized system you also skip the law requirements since you cannot enforce multiple incompatible jurisdictions at the platform level, individual users will be responsible for enforcing it on their own nodes, similar how all you can do when accidentally encountering child porn is to clear your cache.
    - djrogers 9y ago
      > I.e. "I don't want to see this kind of content" leads to "someone else should remove it from all the sites I visit". I don’t think that’s always the mindset. Isn’t it reasonable for people to have the mindset of “I want to go to sites that don’t have content that I find objectionable”? This way websites can decide which group of people they want to cater to.
      - the8472 9y ago
        The context of the discussion is large websites acting as platforms. Their users are bound to have conflicting views about what's "objectionable". So when the moderation mechanism is deletion instead of letting users just filter then the website has to preferentially treat one group instead of being a platform for everyone.
- rmc 9y ago
  Warning: it has this channel https://www.bitchute.com/channel/whitepower/ https://www.bitchute.com/channel/whitepower/ which is full of anti-semitic nazi stuff. It's visible on the front page listed above. You may or may not want to visit that link. Channels aren't open to everyone, so it looks like they have manually allowed that?
flamedoge 9y ago
Webtorrent is another torrent based media sharing
chongli 9y ago
I think the only solution is a distributed and decentralized web. I love the idea but one problem: who pays for it? It's a special case of the co-operative vs corporation problem. Without an individual's starting capital, how do you get off the ground?