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Blender is testing PeerTube after YouTube blocks their videos worldwide

1473 points by gargron 8y ago

kraftman 8y ago
Why has YouTube blocked their videos worldwide?
- gattilorenz 8y ago
  It was in another trending post https://torrentfreak.com/youtubes-piracy-filter-blocks-mit-courses-blender-videos-and-more-180618/ https://torrentfreak.com/youtubes-piracy-filter-blocks-mit-c... Basically, overzealous automatic piracy filters
  - flyingfences 8y ago
    It was allegedly an overzealous automatic filter. As of late, Youtube has been behaving very aggressively towards any content creators who were, in YT's eyes, earning YT less-than-optimal money. Even if it is just an automatic filter in so many cases, their apparent complete apathy regarding the issue is very telling...
- xeromal 8y ago
  Bogus copyright claims
- OscarCunningham 8y ago
  Looks like it's connected to the fact that they had the "Allow advertisements to be displayed alongside my videos" setting turned off. https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...
  - mcguire 8y ago
    Interesting. From the linked contract between Google and Blender: "4. ADVERTISING "4.1 Delivery, Ad Revenues, Payments, Reports. "Google will have the right, but not the obligation, to serve advertising in any and all Google Services, including but not limited to the display of ads on the Playback Pages and within the YouTube Video Player in conjunction with the display or playback of Provider Content and Monetized Content. Provider will receive 55% of Ad Revenues recognised by Google . If one or more Google content providers claim a portion of Monetized Content for monetization through the Content ID system, Provider will receive a pro rata share of the Ad Revenues that would otherwise be due, with such pro rata share to be determined by Google in its reasonable discretion . Recognized revenues do not include items listed in clause 4.3 or taxes. Payments to Provider for Ad Revenues will be sent by Google within approximately sixty (60) days after the end of any calendar month, provided that Provider’s earned balance is $100 or more in the aggregate. When Provider’s monthly earned balance is less than $100, there will be no payment and the balance will accumulate until it exceeds $100, at which time it will be paid to Provider in accordance with the preceding sentence. Any payments to Provider will be made in the manner that Google pays its partners. Google reserves the right to retain all other revenues derived from Google Services, including without limitation any revenues from ads that may appear on any search results pages. Within thirty (30) days of the end of each month, Google will provide Provider with usage reports in the form generally made available to partners at that time . Google may create an account for Provider to access information about payments owed to Provider. To ensure proper payment, Provider is responsible for providing and maintaining accurate contact and payment information associated with its account." The interesting statement is the first sentence: "Google will have the right [...] to serve advertising in any and all Google Services, including but not limited to the display of ads on the Playback Pages and within the YouTube Video Player in conjunction with the display or playback of Provider Content and Monetized Content." "Monitized Content", judging by other parts of the license, appears to be those videos that have "allow ads" checkbox; "Provider Content" are those without that check.
    - Arzh 8y ago
      Yeah, I could see them demanding adding ads to the videos / pages. YouTube is a business and expecting them to host and stream videos worldwide for free is unrealistic. This seems like they would have the right to run ads anyway so I'm not sure why they would need to force them to select that option. (I can also see blenders desire to not have ads but I don't think youtube is at fault for not wanting to actively wanting to lose money on their videos. If that is really the problem it might be interesting to have youtube open a paid option for the cretors to pay for the service and not have any ads / user tracking stuff.)
    - kd5bjo 8y ago
      Some companies that make copyright claims against YouTube videos request a cut of the ad revenue instead of having the videos taken down. I'm pretty sure that "monetized content" is Google's term for these videos that you upload and Google has decided you don't really own.
  - pbasista 8y ago
    Is such a requirement in YouTube's terms of usage? If yes, YouTube should have notified the affected channels first and ask them to change their settings or leave.
    - lainga 8y ago
      Yes, but they might get more money cold-sending monetization contracts a la those junk letters you get that say "SECOND NOTICE PAST DUE" on them.
abnry 8y ago
I can't believe this has been going on for three days. YouTube seems like it is actively sabotaging its independent content creator's channels. But in this case it's not just some random kid living with their parent's. MIT and Blender are both respectable orgs.
- gooseus 8y ago
  I'm pretty annoyed, I was planning on using a bunch of MITOCW video series to level up some on some computer science and information theory this summer and I hadn't even gotten through the first lecture of the first series on my list (6.001 with Sussman from 1986, classic and awesome) when this stopped me in my tracks. I've been waiting patiently hoping it comes back, but at this point I feel like I'm going to have to use archive.org or download directly from them. I was slowly warming up to the idea of paying for Red for commercial-less music and maybe checking out some other paid content, but this has been a bucket of cold water on that notion.
  - dmart 8y ago
    I'm in a similar spot - you can also stream the MP4s from archive.org as a workaround (they're usually linked on the lecture's OCW page.)
  - cityhomesteader 8y ago
    I know this has been posted before but youtube-dl is a godsend when it comes to archiving content. Considering how quickly youtube is taking down educational channels, it's prudent to create a backup just in case.
    - DrJaws 8y ago
      which other educational channels have youtube shut down?
  - JackCh 8y ago
    The 1986 6.001 videos are available here: https://archive.org/details/MIT_Structure_of_Computer_Programs_1986 https://archive.org/details/MIT_Structure_of_Computer_Progra...
lainga 8y ago
4 days now (since the 15th at least) and nothing out of YT. I realize that the portion of their viewers interested in MIT OCW or Blender is small, compared to the portion interested in FNAF and dental surgery on characters from Frozen... but it's also probably the portion they want to piss off least as an internet company. ed: see below comment from OscarCunningham
- gmueckl 8y ago
  This will barely register as a blip for YouTube. They'll survive and be more profitable afterwards.
  - JackCh 8y ago
    The hope for many, perhaps a vain one, is that negatively impacting technical organizations (open source projects or MIT's ability to host computer science course videos) will have a disproportionate effect on the developers of youtube who on average might care about about these sort of organizations more than others. It could hurt youtube developer morale and/or their ability to recruit.
    - yayana 8y ago
      More basically, I only see their ads because there are non-ad videos that draw me to the site and give me a reasonable average impression of the combination of content and ads I see. Remove non-ad videos from YouTube and you would need to cut ads down by 50% to retain viewers like me.. the lower split of sharing on all content and/or lower viewer numbers will further dustress people with ads enabled on their content.. pushing them further into a death spiral of low profitability, poor content and inadequate incentives for the commercial content they apparently want.
Joeboy 8y ago
So this seems to have happened because Youtube wants The Blender Foundation to agree to have their videos monetized. I'm not clear if they want that because of bogus copyright claims, EU legislation etc, or just because they favour making money over not making money? Edit: Either way looking for alternatives seems like a good idea.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  I made a video about this in January, before YouTube strongarmed Blender. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8 I am pretty dismayed to be this right. I didn't think YT would be nearly this aggressive in service of the ideas I outlined. Basically, they take a cut off that activity. In some cases they could take most of or all the money, which is a clear win for them, but even when they pay out they're earning revenue on the transaction. It's been their core business model, so the problems with advocating an adfree behavior become obvious. I would add that this becomes more urgent if they're in crisis. Makes me wish I could get the master copies I'd uploaded back, but there's no chance of that. Bottom line: shots fired. You must work with YouTube the way they want you to work with YouTube, or you'll get punished.
  - lainga 8y ago
    Well, they picked the wrong org to gamble on strongarming in the case of Blender. Instead of getting them to monetize they've just compelled Blender to move platforms.
    - Skunkleton 8y ago
      Other than unlikely damage to the total user critical mass effect, what does YouTube potentially lose from kicking blender out?
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
        Visibility for a viable alternative?
djsumdog 8y ago
I'm curious what YouTube's real numbers are for YouTube profitability. Are these channels at such high subscriber rates that they're cutting into YouTube's ability to sustain themselves? They recently demonetized all of the Salad Fingers videos, causing David Firth to remove all those videos from YouTube and only allowing them to Patreon subscribers via Vimeo. I hope this pushes towards more independent, distributed toob sites. YouTube is simply too big a monolith.
- jgtrosh 8y ago
  I think that the single search box with consistent UX is the killer feature. Subscription is too, in another way. Alternatives need to address these; I believe federated video services / toobs are the only way to aim for the first. Subscriptions should be replaced with RSS.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - samschooler 8y ago
    I stopped using the YouTube site long ago. I only subscribe via Feedly/RSS and watch the videos I want directly with 99% no ads even without an adblocker via the embeded video player.
    - alexbeloi 8y ago
      Where do the creators you follow host their videos?
      - hundchenkatze 8y ago
        Not op, but op may be using the Youtube Subscription RSS feed. Go to https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager and scroll to the bottom. You should see a section labeled "Export to RSS readers".
otakucode 8y ago
It makes sense that YouTube would do this. I've been expecting YouTube to go after channels that are primarily supported by Patreon donations with full teeth and claws for awhile now, and still expect it is coming. Channels not running ads reduced YouTube to a free video hosting service and cuts them out of the revenue loop completely. Their main goal, as I see it, is to transition into a centralized and much more controlled content platform run much more like a traditional TV network used to be. This will enable them to achieve Eric Schmidt's stated goal of taking the reins of human culture to protect the poor from themselves (which he states, though not in those words, in his book 'The New Digital Age'). They also think it makes them more attractive to advertisers (although there is abundant proof now that no 'adpocalypse' ever occurred and YouTube has only grown as an advertising platform... they see this as 'in spite of' niche content being present, not 'because of'). So if there are large channels that have milquetoast content that is non-controversial (for now, it won't take long before all educational content beyond elementary school level is de facto controversial) but aren't monetized, that really leaves YouTube out in the cold. Paying the hosting costs AND they don't have any increased leverage to regulate those channels contents? Worst case scenario as far as they're concerned... but they also don't want that content hopping to a different platform. Google didn't run YouTube at a staggering loss for a decade for nothing, they did it to suppress competition in the video space and guarantee no one could afford to compete with them unless they also had a search engine advertising business that could prop up the titanic losses.
- sly010 8y ago
  > I've been expecting YouTube to go after channels that are primarily supported by Patreon donations with full teeth and claws for awhile now... An alternative solution would be for youtube to compete with patreon, allow sponsorship directly and take a cut. They have in fact been testing this on select channels. On some big channels you see a "sponsor" button next to the "subscribe" button.
  - da_chicken 8y ago
    Yeah, but much like with live streaming, that ship has already left port. Twitch.tv (aka, Amazon) has like 80% of the market. YouTube's streaming has only recently been good enough to use. Patreon's also got inertia for crowd funding and donations. Twitch has had paid subscriptions for a fairly long time and you still see Twitch streamers talking about their Patreon. Twitch only recently added multi tier support, but their bits for donations has essentially killed PayPal (largely since PayPal's service isn't very good). There are people throwing cash at the screen, and YouTube is taking the slow road and they're going to end up as far behind as IBM was in the 90s.
pleasecalllater 8y ago
And the next thing would be... let's think... block all gmail accounts for people who use adblock?
- ntoeu98nt34 8y ago
  Actually, that's an interesting thought. I have a Gmail account I don't use much, but I almost never access it from the web. I only use it with a mail client. I never see any of the ads they would show if I accessed it through the web. I do wonder now if they'll cut it off. I've been trying to move away from using them at all anyway, so no loss if they do, but certainly an interesting idea.
  - rubatuga 8y ago
    Your emails are too valuable for them already...
- kirykl 8y ago
  For a while Gmail would give a browser incompatiblity warning if you were running an adblocker
- tyfon 8y ago
  There is a paid option if you use adblock in google apps for business. I find the service is actually quite good, but I'm currently investigating moving to protonmail instead.
daveid 8y ago
Side note: PeerTube is part of the same federated network as Mastodon. You can follow Blender's PeerTube account from Mastodon by entering @blender@video.blender.org into the search bar and clicking follow on the result!
- ilovecomputers 8y ago
  This is why I'm hyped about the fedi. This is what it'll finally take to break our dependence on a centralized web. Essentially, the email model. I wish we followed this model earlier in the web 2.0 days.
  - joelrunyon 8y ago
    Is there a list of various "federated" version of different social networks? Would be interested in a list if there was one.
    - lev99 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
- Neirin 8y ago
  oh no, now I just have even more questions, what is mastodon?
  - scottinseattle 8y ago
    a killer metal band
  - foxylad 8y ago
    A good replacement for Twitter. Where "good" means: - Decentralised. Anyone can run their own instance, but instances are federated so everyone on any instance can see your toots (Mastodon's tweets). So if you're paranoid about privacy or hate Nazi bootboys, you can run your own instance with complete control. - A nice progression of feeds from only people you follow; to all toots of your instance; to toots from all instances. - Polite discourse, at least on the mastodon.social instance which I belong to. Different instances have different rules, so maybe there is one for Nazi bootboys. - Open, so if you don't like the interface, you can make your own. The stock web interface is fine for me. - No ads! - Trump isn't on it. If you enjoyed Twitter more in the past when real people tweeted about real things, Mastodon is definitely worth checking out.
rdschouw 8y ago
Since I’m a paying YouTube Red customer, I filed a complaint. I think if enough people write in, they’ll change their mind.
- chrisjc 8y ago
  Is this something you do via the YouTubeRed app or did you literally write a complaint and emailed it in? I would like to do the same.
  - puzzle 8y ago
    I sent feedback from the YouTube app while on a blocked video. It gives you the options to contact them via chat, phone or email (the last one is composed all within the app, not in your email client).
  - sonar_un 8y ago
    Seems like this could be a net neutrality issue?
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  As a fellow paying YouTube Red customer, this hadn't occurred to me. I shall do so as well.
  - tssva 8y ago
    As a fellow paying YouTube Premium user I'm glad that YouTube is taking this step to insure the long-term viability of the platform I pay to support.
    - remram 8y ago
      The step being changing their monetization policy without notice or warning, or blocking a popular channel for everyone?
    - lovich 8y ago
      You like being charged for access to videos and then videos being removed because the content creators didn't pay YouTube as well? What happened to people liking technical solutions because they could remove rent seeking middle men?
Analemma_ 8y ago
Wait, am I reading this right? If you're a particularly popular channel, you're required to monetize and YT will block you if you don't? That's ridiculous, and it's totally shooting yourself in the foot. The vast majority of creators with many views do want to monetize, YouTube is losing almost nothing by allowing people not to if they choose. They must be really be desparate for revenue over there.
- quadrangle 8y ago
  If I skipped Hanlon's Razor and jumped to assuming your speculations are right, then I'd say Google wants to head off a future where people specifically donate to those who aren't doing ad-monetizing (i.e. the only ones who actually deserve donations!!) Google wants creators funded, but they want the system to push their ad-focused approach. The last thing Google wants is a future where the (unethical, horrible, destructive) surveillance-capitalism-ad-tech economy goes away…
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    > The last thing Google wants is a future where the (unethical, horrible, destructive) surveillance-capitalism-ad-tech economy goes away… Because the corporate culture of Google/YouTube has changed into one of authoritarian adherence. This is the natural result.
    - vkou 8y ago
      > Because the corporate culture of Google/YouTube has changed into one of authoritarian adherence. This is the natural result. Really? Is that what you've taken away from the Maven debate? There's a couple simpler, far more plausible explanations.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Really? Is that what you've taken away from the Maven debate? It's a number of observations. It's only natural that a company like YouTube would seek to monetize and shift towards the mainstream. It's what they are doing with the long tail and the creative margins which is suspect.
vorpalhex 8y ago
So YouTube created an effective monopoly through social networking, and now is abusing that position. Not surprising but disappointing. Hopefully people leave YouTube in droves and remind them that their position is not static. First time hearing of PeerTube, but looks good so far.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  > now is abusing that position Offering to host your videos for free and display ads along them hardly seems like "abusing that position"...
  - emilfihlman 8y ago
    For free? YouTube gives Google _unparalleled_ access to what we like, how we think, what we want, ... It's the best profiling tool there is. Let's not say "for free" when we are paying a price for it already.
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      Yes, for free. You can create an account and upload as many videos as you want without paying absolutely anything. Even more, without handing over any personal information. But hey, feel free to upload your videos elsewhere.
      - Erik816 8y ago
        You're giving them content they can monetize, so it's no wonder they will let you give it to them for free.
        ucaetano 8y ago
        > You're giving them content they can monetize Well, exactly, content they can monetize.
        jacksmith21006 8y ago
buovjaga 8y ago
PeerTube fundraiser: https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-federated-video-platform https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free...
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  For those not familiar with this fundraising platform, it appears to be legit. I asked them about it last month: https://cybre.space/@Riley/100131447697085131 https://cybre.space/@Riley/100131447697085131
  - ealhad 8y ago
    It is indeed, and is quite popular in France for nonprofit or social projects.
zelon88 8y ago
I've been meaning to cancel for a while. Just got around to it and it felt amazing.
otterpro 8y ago
Why not switch to Vimeo, a well-established and stable video hosting platform? There's no advertising and no shenanigans of ads being forced on your video. The hosting is not free, but at least you have control over your videos and privacy issues. Peertube, d.tube, and other federated/decentralized streaming service are really not that reliable, at least from my experience.
- teaspoons 8y ago
  because it always buffers 2 seconds into a video
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- plopz 8y ago
  Vimeo only accepts content that it deems "artistic". Way back in 2008, a site called stage6 shut down, at the time it was the only streaming site that allowed 1080p videos and was the go to site for video game content creators to upload videos. After it shut down many of those users tried out vimeo since they were allowing 720p videos compared to youtube's 480p. Vimeo then deleted the videos and disallowed the content. For a period, things went back to direct downloads instead of streaming, but youtube increased quality and the content shifted over with it. Edit: Apparently vimeo reversed its position in 2014. https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules
  - tomjakubowski 8y ago
    Huh? The company I work for hosts all of its marketing videos on Vimeo. Are you sure about this?
    - plopz 8y ago
      I just looked it up, apparently they reversed their position in 2014. https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules
teilo 8y ago
Great. Just when my daughter has installed Blender to learn 3D modelling.
- larkeith 8y ago
  You can view all the PeerTube-hosted videos in your browser at https://video.blender.org https://video.blender.org The only difference is you don't go through YouTube.
- soulkito 8y ago
  As someone who recently started learning Blender I recommend the YouTube channel Blender Guru. They guy makes great tutorials for both beginners and more advanced users.
  - tvanantwerp 8y ago
    I will second Blender Guru as an excellent resource! (Might want to increase the playback speed though--his videos take a while...)
  - teilo 8y ago
    Thanks!
- dragontamer 8y ago
  Look up the "Humane Rigging" set of tutorials. Its the best Blender tutorial I've found so far, but it only covers rigging. (To an insane level of detail, but its ONLY about rigging).
- asteli 8y ago
  I learned Blender almost a decade ago. Instrumental in my learning the application was competing in informal speed-modeling contests. They were conducted from an IRC channel, and ranged from 5 minutes to a couple hours, with random-ish topics: a chair, a pair of binoculars, boombox, etc. I am fairly certain this experience also contributed to well-developed spatial skills (mentally representing and manipulating objects). I hope you encourage your daughter along this path. :)
beiller 8y ago
Blender is the epic example of free software slowly eventually eating the big proprietary guys' lunch. Volunteers spending countless hours writing software, because they were fed up with the very high pricing point of the alternatives (Maya, 3DS). Now hopefully they can kick off the eating of large internet incumbents like Youtube, maybe using some decentralized free video sharing like PeerTube. I love watching blender tutorials. I hope this creates more competition in this space (online video hosting).
- ealhad 8y ago
  This is great news for PeerTube! Since Blender as an established community, I hope PeerTube will gain traction from it.
  - LyndsySimon 8y ago
    In at least a small way, it already has. I'd not heard of PeerTube prior to reading this submission, and now I'm interested.
    - ealhad 8y ago
      And that's already great!
    - reitanqild 8y ago
      For what it's worth peertube is running a crowdfunding campaign now if anyone is interested: https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-federated-video-platform https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free...
    - corobo 8y ago
      Indeed! I've been intrigued enough to look into hosting an instance on a video-related domain I have knocking about
- chris_wot 8y ago
  It would be rather ironic if Blender was able to remove Youtube's dominance :-)
larkeith 8y ago
Direct link to blog post: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...
liveoneggs 8y ago
just host your code on github, tutorials on youtube, chats on slack, forums on reddit...
ohiovr 8y ago
YouPHPtube could be a nice option for the Blender Foundation if they don't mind paying for their bandwidth usage. It is pretty easy to install (the hard way). I'm going to make a docker container for it and the encoder sometime. One advantage is that it can use amazon s3 storage and there are instructions for setting up live streaming. AFAIK, peer tube doesn't have a live stream capability (though I realize that the blender foundation may never use such a feature).
- isostatic 8y ago
  I was interested. Then I looked at github > This Software must be used for Good, never Evil. It is expressly forbidden to use YouPHPTube to build porn sites, violence, racism or anything else that affects human integrity or denigrates the image of anyone. Sigh.
deltron3030 8y ago
If you're interested in Blender, but come from a ${'insert your favorite creative tool'} background, and want less cognitive load (adaption to quirks that only exist within Blender), check out Bforartists! It's a fork of Blender with better, more familiar UX and behavior. https://www.bforartists.de/ https://www.bforartists.de/
- ePierre 8y ago
  I didn't know this! The Blender team is working on Blender 2.8 which will bring a lot of new features, including a lot of UI changes. There was an article about some of these changes a while ago on their blog [1], and more recently a video showing a lot of these UI changes... available on the Blender Developers Youtube channel (how ironic!) [2]. [1] https://code.blender.org/2018/04/tools-toolbar-and-tool-widgets/ https://code.blender.org/2018/04/tools-toolbar-and-tool-widg... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufGqRP6Gc8&t=6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufGqRP6Gc8&t=6s
squarefoot 8y ago
Excellent performance on all videos but one (Elephants Dream). That video hangs forever strangely reporting a total length of 10:50:04 in the lower left corner, that is, over 10 hours which is of course incorrect. Maybe a problem during upload? All other videos start immediately even in full HD; so far I've watched a couple in their entirety with no glitches at all.
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
One of the huge problems with YouTube etc is the centralised nature means normal methods of telling good from bad are limited. Recently the Peppa Pig shock videos thread started up again. As a parent it does worry me - but if we had to visit "grot-peppa-porn-1234.com" before viewing the video instead of choosing "bbc.com" I think managing the problem would be easier. So, peertube is nice. Perhaps it's not the right solution still?
dang 8y ago
Url changed from https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009077941676986368 https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009077941676986368, which points to this.
scottmcdot 8y ago
Correct me if I am wrong, but if content creators take their content off YouTube and use PeerTube, does this mean that there will be separate instances of PeerTube (e.g., video.blender.org) for each channel/creator? Another example could be if ol' Pewds decided to also do this - would his content be hosted on something like video.pewdiepie.org?
- andypants 8y ago
  Each instance of peertube is like youtube. There can be many users and users can have many channels. You can choose which instance you want to upload to, since different instances will have different storage limits, user limits, content policies, content focus, moderation, site layout, etc. Or you can run your own instance if you want full control over your content and the site as a whole. Different instances of peertube can follow each other (doesn't have to be mutual - think twitter follow) and essentially share content to improve discoverability (think twitter timeline showing content from all the instances you follow).
  - scottmcdot 8y ago
    I see, thanks for the clarification. When it came to searching for all content across all instances (in a way like how we can search all content on YouTube) is this something that would be possible?
    - executesorder66 8y ago
      According to [0]: > The administrators of a PeerTube instance can follow each other. When your PeerTube instance follows another PeerTube instance, you receive the videos preview informations from this instance. This way, you can display the videos available on your instance and on the instances you decided to follow. So you keep control of the videos displayed on your PeerTube instance! [0] https://joinpeertube.org/en/ https://joinpeertube.org/en/
    - andypants 8y ago
      You would need to find an instance of peertube that is following all other instances. There are several peertubes that try to follow as many other instances as possible, but there will always be private or unadvertised instances. If nobody knows a particular instance exists, then nobody can follow it and its content won't be discoverable.
consultSKI 8y ago
Cool.
davidparks21 8y ago
Does this have anything to do with Google removing their "Don't be evil" trademark? Maybe huh?
lerax 8y ago
Wow this really cool! Never saw PeerTube before. It's UI is far away better than Youtube!
nunez 8y ago
I can't wait for a real competitor to YouTube to pop up.
RIMR 8y ago
I never thought I would see the day that Google removed Big Buck Bunny, the definitive copyleft short film, on copyright infringment grounds, against the actual creators, and there would actually be some argument over whether or not this was proper....
EastSmith 8y ago
I would love to buy a preinstalled peertube instance on a Raspberry Pi and plug it in somewhere around the house.
- mmozeiko 8y ago
  From https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/doc/production.md https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/... > Please don't install PeerTube for production on a small device behind a low bandwidth connection (example: a Raspberry PI behind your ADSL link) because it could slow down the fediverse.
  - dudeofx 8y ago
    I am looking for a technical explanation. Would this be because of fear of establishing a precedence where if a lot of people did that you'd have a situation of a lot of leechers but few seeders. If thats the case, its the same situation where you have a lot of users watching videos on a server. The server can limit membership to protect itself I suppose but a personal instance would be better then a user that just watches but does not contribute. I suppose somebody could make a RPI client that becomes a member to one or more instances and just downloads. Just let the servers protect themselves by limiting use here and there.
app4soft 8y ago
:-/ This PeerTube-based Blender's webpage NOT working in Links2[0] (or any other browser without JavaScript) and Pale Moon[1,2]. [0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009218500383080449 https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009218500383080449 [1] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009208842494906368 https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009208842494906368 [2] https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/675 https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/675
- duskwuff 8y ago
  Uhh... it's a streaming video site. It's not going to be viewable in a terminal-based browser, regardless of whether it uses JS or not.
nkoren 8y ago
Okay, the Youtube/political angle of this is pretty horrendous and is deserving of discussion. But they pose a question about Peertube: how well does it hold? In my limited testing from central San Francisco: it doesn't. Which makes me sad. Anybody have any insight into the pros/cons/ultimate performance/scalability limits for Peertube? Is the flakiness a function of immature technology or inviable technology?
- gravypod 8y ago
  For video serving encoding technology is good enough that we don't actually have to shovel that much data over the network. Latency is the biggest issue from what I understand. Most of the amazing work google has done to make youtube fast is the magic behind google's omni-presence established world wide. Like they say in the post they have one datacenter in the EU serving this content. If they used AWS and spun up an instance serving content from every AWS region available the performance would be much better. I was able to play the video but it lagged a bit to get started until I was able to find peers near me. This is likely a latency thing to the remote host in the EU. PeerTube should scale much more easily than a conventional site because viewers, I assume, are peers of the content. More people looking at something means more people serving that content. The biggest con is that if you're viewing the video you're shoveling data to other viewers which, previously, you've likely not done. I hope more people try things like this tech.
  - lev99 8y ago
    I will always gladly trade a reasonable amount of upload bandwidth to avoid advertisements.
    - sonar_un 8y ago
      Yes, but because of the highly asynchronous bandwidth we have available trading an even little bit up upload bandwidth can be extremely detrimental to internet performance.
      - deleted 8y ago
sumanthvepa 8y ago
It seems to me that YouTube's business model is ad supported. They need to run ads to pay for infrastructure to support the service and make profit for themselves, since they are not charging the user. So a sufficiently large channel that does not permit ads will eat into their revenues.i.e. it becomes an expensive free rider. This, I guess, is the reason behind the decision. I suppose it makes sense. But I don't see why they don't offer a paid option to entities like Blender who don't want ads?
- em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
  Actually YouTube has started a patronage "Sponsorship" system, where users pay $5 a month to support a channel (and get "perks").
  - sumanthvepa 8y ago
    Yes. But this puts the burden on blender's viewers. That may not result in sufficient revenue. (Generally charging the viewer is not a winning revenue generation strategy.) The creator may more resources to pay and definitely more incentive.
  - film42 8y ago
    I've been sponsoring a channel for a few months now but still find that youtube runs ads on their videos. I guess the perks are for exclusive live chats and stuff. Still, it's better than not having a sponsorship system.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  More to the point, why don't they go ahead and permit those of us who are paying them -- i.e., YouTube Red subscribers -- to view the blocked videos?
  - sumanthvepa 8y ago
    I suspect that that would not result in sufficient revenue to offset the costs of hosting Blender's videos.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
The next step will be that you won't be indexed by Google's web search engine if you don't have AdSense for Content ads. Why? Because the steam is going out of Google's ad business[1], and Google has no other business. They have added just about all of the advertising on their own pages they can get away with and they started by squeezing channels with fewer than 4k views a month, and now their squeezing channels that choose not to show ads. Thinks about what this means in the big picture, Google cannot get enough people showing ads on their videos to support people who choose not to show ads. What percentage of Youtube videos don't show ads? 5% ? 10%? Don't hate me for it, but my prediction is that the next lifeline Google will reach for will be charging money for turn by turn directions in maps. They really need to find some way other than search ads to make money. [1] This is hyperbole, I don't think they will deindex sites but I can see it affecting the page rank.
- cwyers 8y ago
  > Google cannot get enough people showing ads on their videos to support people who choose not to show ads. Or maybe they just don't want to.
  - ChuckMcM 8y ago
    That is possible, but I think it unlikely based on the following reasoning, if you are watching a video without an ad on Youtube, when it finishes they have an opportunity to share a bunch of similar videos that you might like, ones that do have ads. If you end up not going to Youtube at all because the ad free video is hosted elsewhere they lose that opportunity to "sell" you on a video with an advert in it. When I was at Blekko we were analyzing this sort of thing pretty hard. We found that a web page with no ads could point to pages with ads and that the expected rate of return on traffic to the ad free page could be calculated (it was non-zero revenue). I would agree that is only a proxy for browsing behavior as the Youtube example consumes resources for the ad free video as well, but unless YouTube has even worse monetization than the most cynical predictions, I would guess it would be worth it to have the Ad free video surrounded by suggestions.
- laser 8y ago
rurounijones 8y ago
So I had a look at Peertube and had the friendly reminder "The sharing system used by this video implies that some technical information about your system (such as a public IP address) can be accessed publicly." Which is then expanded on in an about page: "PeerTube uses the BitTorrent protocol to share bandwidth between users. It implies that your public IP address is stored in the public BitTorrent tracker of the video PeerTube instance as long as you're watching the video. If you want to keep your public IP address private, please use a VPN or Tor. " Seems like a large privacy leak that can be exploited by anyone who signs up to the tracker. Requiring a VPN or Tor just for privacy from other users seems like an excessive requirement.
- guelo 8y ago
  That's what peer to peer means.
  - rurounijones 8y ago
    Peertube doesn't necessarily mean "Peer to Peer with Bittorrent". The "Peer" could just refer to the federated nature of the servers. Even then "Peer to Peer" technical details can be lost on people. Still, kudos to them to actually bring this to the forefront but I won't be using it.
- lev99 8y ago
  Is there a reason I don't want to expose my public IP address? Every server I connect to knows my IP address. Connecting to bittorrent would give you the following information: * Key (IP) to connect to other data sources (but joins will be dirty, IP addresses change, people use multiple ip address, multiple people use the same ip address). * ISP name * Rough location (mine says I'm in a suburb about 20 miles away, when I'm actually in the city) * Which files you have and are willing to share. * Which files you are requesting. There is no PII, and the only thing interesting would be to do location analysis or to try to cluster the files based on taste (people that watch movie A are likely to also watch movie B)
  - 8y ago
0xcde4c3db 8y ago
Does PeerTube provide a way to have any server other than the originating instance act as a tracker/seed? The readme diagrams make it seem like the long-term video hosting is still effectively centralized, with only metadata being federated.
- tcit 8y ago
  It is planned.
atotic 8y ago
All Blender needs to do is to publish a few videos that offend everyone, and get demonetized. Problem solved!
arenaninja 8y ago
I've noticed a trend on reddit to link outside of YT for short clips. I hope the pace picks up, I get the impression that YT is actively hostile to a lot of content
Rapzid 8y ago
The most shocking thing to me is that YouTube didnt't have the presience to handle Blender with better care..
DoctorOetker 8y ago
Influencers MUST CO-OPERATE!
iamleppert 8y ago
One reason why I will never, ever work at Google. They are a reprehensible company on so many levels.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
greydata 8y ago
https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/21/an-offer-creators-cant-refuse/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/21/an-offer-creators-cant-ref...
dingo_bat 8y ago
They should just seed a nice torrent for all their videos.
Endy 8y ago
Am I the only one who thinks it would be better if Blender uploaded directly to archive.org or archive.is? As much as it's interesting on a technical level, the fact that PeerTube is by nature decentralized and self-hosted is going to reduce Blender's overall visibility (which is what I think Alphabet/Google wants). Whether Alphabet is still making any money off SketchUp, or whether one of the 3D companies is paying them something, I think this move was intentionally targeted on their part. And unfortunately, like most of the things that have happened ever since Google completely dropped the first word from "Don't Be Evil", I'm terrified that they're going to win.
- codelord 8y ago
  What is terrifying about this? Why should Google pay for hosting and distributing your video online forever without making any money? How's that "evil"?
  - bordercases 8y ago
    Monopoly of convenience and loyalty capture There's no good reason why, but that's why we try to regulate monopolies
    - notroot 8y ago
      There are a lot of good reasons why monopolies should be regulated.
      - bordercases 8y ago
        I meant why Google should pay for hosting free stuff
  - Krasnol 8y ago
    You are absolutely right! Google has been suffering under all this user generated content dragging even more visitors to their already struggling hosting infrastructure for too long! It's time for relief! Let's move the burden of user generated content away and let others suffer! Free Google!
em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
Blender is running their PeerTube test from a European datacenter. I wonder what will happen to the legality of hosting a PeerTube site with public uploads if EU's upload filter law gets passed. Also I wonder how the GDPR will affect them (and anyone else hosting PeerTube in Europe or with EU users)...won't they need to get explicit consent from everyone for getting things like user IP address (so they can protect against spam and DDoS attacks) and won't they have a tough time ensuring everyone who uploads could delete their videos?
jamescyber 8y ago
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jameslk 8y ago
PeerTube is using WebTorrent for videos. This means user's IPs are exposed to other users. Wouldn't it be possible to abuse this to track others by associating IPs with types of videos/content viewed?
etatoby 8y ago
From Google's point of view, the Blender Foundation are the bad guys. They host a very popular channel on their servers, using up a lot of bandwidth, storage, and resources, they don't pay a cent to the hosting provider, and on top of that, they actively try to prevent their content from paying up for itself. I don't see it as shocking that Google is forcing them to enable ads. What I find surprising is that Google did not see this coming and thus A. never limited ad-free content to small channels in their ToS, and B. does not provide a paid hosting option.
- krolley 8y ago
  This is a totally fair point. But wouldn't it make more sense to either (a) continue to pay the hosting costs to stay known as the 'one true place' to find online videos, or (b) allow the Blender Foundation to pay to host their vidoes on YouTube if they want to stay ad-free?
  - OskarS 8y ago
    Yeah, I totally agree. It's a very bad look for them to essentially disallow ad-free non-profits if they get popular enough. Given how small of a segment this is (the vast majority of massively popular channels monetize, after all), and the fact that they already have the infrastructure to support it, it should be a no-brainer for them to keep Blender on. The reputation cost is clearly worse than the actual loss in hosting costs here. However, they're a big company, and it makes sense that they have a policy of "if your channel is big enough, you have to put ads on it to support hosting cost". Making policy exceptions in a big company like this is tricky, and it seems Blender just fell through the cracks.
- nctorn 8y ago
  Those popular channels, is what drives customer acquisition and stickiness at YouTube. The costs associated to this are simply marketing costs, so I think it’s just greedy to charge your content providers to drive down the retention and acquisition costs.
- Already__Taken 8y ago
  The minute I can't just find everything on youtube though their entire model begins to go down the toilet. What's that going to cost them.
akerro 8y ago
They should publish everything on IPFS too, maybe even peertube should support IPFS.
AsyncAwait 8y ago
PeerTube is awesome and needs more visibility. Coincidentally, they're having a fundraiser right now to be able to ship a 1.0, so if you like the idea of a federated, decentralized YouTube alternative that can also talk to other ActivityPub software like Mastodon etc. consider donating[1]. 1 - https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-federated-video-platform https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free...
- ealhad 8y ago
  And you should also consider contributing! It’s Typescript on client and server. https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube
ariwilson 8y ago
The comments here are more interesting than the article itself. Looks like the real issue was a UX snafu on YouTube's part that support had trouble resolving for too long. Let's hope YouTube does better in the future. However, if you read the comments here, they paint a sinister portrait of YouTube that has nothing to do with Blender's issue. Some examples: - ads are required for big channels (false) - demonetization of content creators (unrelated) - anti-trust based on search or social networking (unrelated) - SketchUp is blocking YouTube videos (false) We might as well change Hacker News from an article based format to a topic based format if everyone is just going to bring in their unrelated and false pet peeves to every discussion.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  This is because this issue with Blender is just a cherry on top of a multitude of issues with YouTube that have crop up for the past few years. So the thread is about the impact of YouTube algorithms. I have myself found it pretty hard to publish videos without ads on YouTube, even though I have a minuscule channel. Their Content ID system is triggered for almost any background music I throw at it, including Royalty Free or CC-BY music. The insidious part is that the videos are not taken down, they just put ads on top of it while you try to refute the claim, even if you tick the "I do not want ads to appear" box. The problem in this instance is anyone can upload a piece of audio and claim copyright on it, and video are then automatically flagged. There is an interesting support thread about paid-for, Royalty-free classical music, that shows how outrageous the system is: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/iMlPyMqNhq8 https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/iMlPy...
  - boernard 8y ago
    the 'interesting support thread' is more than 8 years old...
    - jobigoud 8y ago
      And yet the problem remains. There are topics about fake claimants, false positives and wrongly blocked videos all over the place.
dosshell 8y ago
Wait, is it really solved now? I get the following error for many videos: > This video contains content from BlenderFoundation. It is not available in your country. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kes2qmijy7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kes2qmijy7w and all other videos in "Blender Fundamentals" playlist. I'm located in Sweden.
- thisacctforreal 8y ago
  Same error and message in Canada.
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  Same in the US.
yboris 8y ago
Blender videos are back: https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009358627839381505 https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009358627839381505 Read about the chain of coincidences, bad UIs, wrong error messages, ignorant support desks and being non-standard here: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...
microcolonel 8y ago
You know, the value proposition of YouTube Red/Premium (extra features in the Android app, no ads on any device) is just starting to blossom as YouTube alienates a major portion of their most productive creators, in an apparent bid to build yet another TV channel nobody wants to watch or pay for.
testcross 8y ago
Reminder that PeerTube is doing a crowdfunding to develop the project further. Available at https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-federated-video-platform/ https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free...
saredust 8y ago
Hello, start earning by paid surveys. http://www.clixsense.com/?8172285 http://www.clixsense.com/?8172285
DpdC 8y ago
YOUTUBE STOP PAYING MILLIONS OF CREATORS WITH SMALL INCOME BY THE FACE, BY THE FACE. WITH YOUR CHANGES NOW ADD METHODS OF PAYMENT, AND NOW YOU WANT TO REDUCE CHARGES. Well if that is not to take advantage of the user. What is it?

1473 points by gargron 8y ago

kraftman 8y ago

Why has YouTube blocked their videos worldwide?

gattilorenz 8y ago
It was in another trending post https://torrentfreak.com/youtubes-piracy-filter-blocks-mit-courses-blender-videos-and-more-180618/ https://torrentfreak.com/youtubes-piracy-filter-blocks-mit-c... Basically, overzealous automatic piracy filters
- flyingfences 8y ago
  It was allegedly an overzealous automatic filter. As of late, Youtube has been behaving very aggressively towards any content creators who were, in YT's eyes, earning YT less-than-optimal money. Even if it is just an automatic filter in so many cases, their apparent complete apathy regarding the issue is very telling...
xeromal 8y ago
Bogus copyright claims
OscarCunningham 8y ago
Looks like it's connected to the fact that they had the "Allow advertisements to be displayed alongside my videos" setting turned off. https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...
- mcguire 8y ago
  Interesting. From the linked contract between Google and Blender: "4. ADVERTISING "4.1 Delivery, Ad Revenues, Payments, Reports. "Google will have the right, but not the obligation, to serve advertising in any and all Google Services, including but not limited to the display of ads on the Playback Pages and within the YouTube Video Player in conjunction with the display or playback of Provider Content and Monetized Content. Provider will receive 55% of Ad Revenues recognised by Google . If one or more Google content providers claim a portion of Monetized Content for monetization through the Content ID system, Provider will receive a pro rata share of the Ad Revenues that would otherwise be due, with such pro rata share to be determined by Google in its reasonable discretion . Recognized revenues do not include items listed in clause 4.3 or taxes. Payments to Provider for Ad Revenues will be sent by Google within approximately sixty (60) days after the end of any calendar month, provided that Provider’s earned balance is $100 or more in the aggregate. When Provider’s monthly earned balance is less than $100, there will be no payment and the balance will accumulate until it exceeds $100, at which time it will be paid to Provider in accordance with the preceding sentence. Any payments to Provider will be made in the manner that Google pays its partners. Google reserves the right to retain all other revenues derived from Google Services, including without limitation any revenues from ads that may appear on any search results pages. Within thirty (30) days of the end of each month, Google will provide Provider with usage reports in the form generally made available to partners at that time . Google may create an account for Provider to access information about payments owed to Provider. To ensure proper payment, Provider is responsible for providing and maintaining accurate contact and payment information associated with its account." The interesting statement is the first sentence: "Google will have the right [...] to serve advertising in any and all Google Services, including but not limited to the display of ads on the Playback Pages and within the YouTube Video Player in conjunction with the display or playback of Provider Content and Monetized Content." "Monitized Content", judging by other parts of the license, appears to be those videos that have "allow ads" checkbox; "Provider Content" are those without that check.
  - Arzh 8y ago
    Yeah, I could see them demanding adding ads to the videos / pages. YouTube is a business and expecting them to host and stream videos worldwide for free is unrealistic. This seems like they would have the right to run ads anyway so I'm not sure why they would need to force them to select that option. (I can also see blenders desire to not have ads but I don't think youtube is at fault for not wanting to actively wanting to lose money on their videos. If that is really the problem it might be interesting to have youtube open a paid option for the cretors to pay for the service and not have any ads / user tracking stuff.)
  - kd5bjo 8y ago
    Some companies that make copyright claims against YouTube videos request a cut of the ad revenue instead of having the videos taken down. I'm pretty sure that "monetized content" is Google's term for these videos that you upload and Google has decided you don't really own.
- pbasista 8y ago
  Is such a requirement in YouTube's terms of usage? If yes, YouTube should have notified the affected channels first and ask them to change their settings or leave.
  - lainga 8y ago
    Yes, but they might get more money cold-sending monetization contracts a la those junk letters you get that say "SECOND NOTICE PAST DUE" on them.

abnry 8y ago

I can't believe this has been going on for three days. YouTube seems like it is actively sabotaging its independent content creator's channels. But in this case it's not just some random kid living with their parent's. MIT and Blender are both respectable orgs.

gooseus 8y ago
I'm pretty annoyed, I was planning on using a bunch of MITOCW video series to level up some on some computer science and information theory this summer and I hadn't even gotten through the first lecture of the first series on my list (6.001 with Sussman from 1986, classic and awesome) when this stopped me in my tracks. I've been waiting patiently hoping it comes back, but at this point I feel like I'm going to have to use archive.org or download directly from them. I was slowly warming up to the idea of paying for Red for commercial-less music and maybe checking out some other paid content, but this has been a bucket of cold water on that notion.
- dmart 8y ago
  I'm in a similar spot - you can also stream the MP4s from archive.org as a workaround (they're usually linked on the lecture's OCW page.)
- cityhomesteader 8y ago
  I know this has been posted before but youtube-dl is a godsend when it comes to archiving content. Considering how quickly youtube is taking down educational channels, it's prudent to create a backup just in case.
  - DrJaws 8y ago
    which other educational channels have youtube shut down?
- JackCh 8y ago
  The 1986 6.001 videos are available here: https://archive.org/details/MIT_Structure_of_Computer_Programs_1986 https://archive.org/details/MIT_Structure_of_Computer_Progra...

lainga 8y ago

4 days now (since the 15th at least) and nothing out of YT. I realize that the portion of their viewers interested in MIT OCW or Blender is small, compared to the portion interested in FNAF and dental surgery on characters from Frozen... but it's also probably the portion they want to piss off least as an internet company. ed: see below comment from OscarCunningham

gmueckl 8y ago
This will barely register as a blip for YouTube. They'll survive and be more profitable afterwards.
- JackCh 8y ago
  The hope for many, perhaps a vain one, is that negatively impacting technical organizations (open source projects or MIT's ability to host computer science course videos) will have a disproportionate effect on the developers of youtube who on average might care about about these sort of organizations more than others. It could hurt youtube developer morale and/or their ability to recruit.
  - yayana 8y ago
    More basically, I only see their ads because there are non-ad videos that draw me to the site and give me a reasonable average impression of the combination of content and ads I see. Remove non-ad videos from YouTube and you would need to cut ads down by 50% to retain viewers like me.. the lower split of sharing on all content and/or lower viewer numbers will further dustress people with ads enabled on their content.. pushing them further into a death spiral of low profitability, poor content and inadequate incentives for the commercial content they apparently want.

Joeboy 8y ago

So this seems to have happened because Youtube wants The Blender Foundation to agree to have their videos monetized. I'm not clear if they want that because of bogus copyright claims, EU legislation etc, or just because they favour making money over not making money? Edit: Either way looking for alternatives seems like a good idea.

Applejinx 8y ago
I made a video about this in January, before YouTube strongarmed Blender. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ksbTTXHw8 I am pretty dismayed to be this right. I didn't think YT would be nearly this aggressive in service of the ideas I outlined. Basically, they take a cut off that activity. In some cases they could take most of or all the money, which is a clear win for them, but even when they pay out they're earning revenue on the transaction. It's been their core business model, so the problems with advocating an adfree behavior become obvious. I would add that this becomes more urgent if they're in crisis. Makes me wish I could get the master copies I'd uploaded back, but there's no chance of that. Bottom line: shots fired. You must work with YouTube the way they want you to work with YouTube, or you'll get punished.
- lainga 8y ago
  Well, they picked the wrong org to gamble on strongarming in the case of Blender. Instead of getting them to monetize they've just compelled Blender to move platforms.
  - Skunkleton 8y ago
    Other than unlikely damage to the total user critical mass effect, what does YouTube potentially lose from kicking blender out?
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
      Visibility for a viable alternative?

djsumdog 8y ago

I'm curious what YouTube's real numbers are for YouTube profitability. Are these channels at such high subscriber rates that they're cutting into YouTube's ability to sustain themselves? They recently demonetized all of the Salad Fingers videos, causing David Firth to remove all those videos from YouTube and only allowing them to Patreon subscribers via Vimeo. I hope this pushes towards more independent, distributed toob sites. YouTube is simply too big a monolith.

jgtrosh 8y ago
I think that the single search box with consistent UX is the killer feature. Subscription is too, in another way. Alternatives need to address these; I believe federated video services / toobs are the only way to aim for the first. Subscriptions should be replaced with RSS.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- samschooler 8y ago
  I stopped using the YouTube site long ago. I only subscribe via Feedly/RSS and watch the videos I want directly with 99% no ads even without an adblocker via the embeded video player.
  - alexbeloi 8y ago
    Where do the creators you follow host their videos?
    - hundchenkatze 8y ago
      Not op, but op may be using the Youtube Subscription RSS feed. Go to https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager and scroll to the bottom. You should see a section labeled "Export to RSS readers".

otakucode 8y ago

It makes sense that YouTube would do this. I've been expecting YouTube to go after channels that are primarily supported by Patreon donations with full teeth and claws for awhile now, and still expect it is coming. Channels not running ads reduced YouTube to a free video hosting service and cuts them out of the revenue loop completely. Their main goal, as I see it, is to transition into a centralized and much more controlled content platform run much more like a traditional TV network used to be. This will enable them to achieve Eric Schmidt's stated goal of taking the reins of human culture to protect the poor from themselves (which he states, though not in those words, in his book 'The New Digital Age'). They also think it makes them more attractive to advertisers (although there is abundant proof now that no 'adpocalypse' ever occurred and YouTube has only grown as an advertising platform... they see this as 'in spite of' niche content being present, not 'because of'). So if there are large channels that have milquetoast content that is non-controversial (for now, it won't take long before all educational content beyond elementary school level is de facto controversial) but aren't monetized, that really leaves YouTube out in the cold. Paying the hosting costs AND they don't have any increased leverage to regulate those channels contents? Worst case scenario as far as they're concerned... but they also don't want that content hopping to a different platform. Google didn't run YouTube at a staggering loss for a decade for nothing, they did it to suppress competition in the video space and guarantee no one could afford to compete with them unless they also had a search engine advertising business that could prop up the titanic losses.

sly010 8y ago
> I've been expecting YouTube to go after channels that are primarily supported by Patreon donations with full teeth and claws for awhile now... An alternative solution would be for youtube to compete with patreon, allow sponsorship directly and take a cut. They have in fact been testing this on select channels. On some big channels you see a "sponsor" button next to the "subscribe" button.
- da_chicken 8y ago
  Yeah, but much like with live streaming, that ship has already left port. Twitch.tv (aka, Amazon) has like 80% of the market. YouTube's streaming has only recently been good enough to use. Patreon's also got inertia for crowd funding and donations. Twitch has had paid subscriptions for a fairly long time and you still see Twitch streamers talking about their Patreon. Twitch only recently added multi tier support, but their bits for donations has essentially killed PayPal (largely since PayPal's service isn't very good). There are people throwing cash at the screen, and YouTube is taking the slow road and they're going to end up as far behind as IBM was in the 90s.

pleasecalllater 8y ago

And the next thing would be... let's think... block all gmail accounts for people who use adblock?

ntoeu98nt34 8y ago
Actually, that's an interesting thought. I have a Gmail account I don't use much, but I almost never access it from the web. I only use it with a mail client. I never see any of the ads they would show if I accessed it through the web. I do wonder now if they'll cut it off. I've been trying to move away from using them at all anyway, so no loss if they do, but certainly an interesting idea.
- rubatuga 8y ago
  Your emails are too valuable for them already...
kirykl 8y ago
For a while Gmail would give a browser incompatiblity warning if you were running an adblocker
tyfon 8y ago
There is a paid option if you use adblock in google apps for business. I find the service is actually quite good, but I'm currently investigating moving to protonmail instead.

daveid 8y ago

Side note: PeerTube is part of the same federated network as Mastodon. You can follow Blender's PeerTube account from Mastodon by entering @blender@video.blender.org into the search bar and clicking follow on the result!

ilovecomputers 8y ago
This is why I'm hyped about the fedi. This is what it'll finally take to break our dependence on a centralized web. Essentially, the email model. I wish we followed this model earlier in the web 2.0 days.
- joelrunyon 8y ago
  Is there a list of various "federated" version of different social networks? Would be interested in a list if there was one.
  - lev99 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
Neirin 8y ago
oh no, now I just have even more questions, what is mastodon?
- scottinseattle 8y ago
  a killer metal band
- foxylad 8y ago
  A good replacement for Twitter. Where "good" means: - Decentralised. Anyone can run their own instance, but instances are federated so everyone on any instance can see your toots (Mastodon's tweets). So if you're paranoid about privacy or hate Nazi bootboys, you can run your own instance with complete control. - A nice progression of feeds from only people you follow; to all toots of your instance; to toots from all instances. - Polite discourse, at least on the mastodon.social instance which I belong to. Different instances have different rules, so maybe there is one for Nazi bootboys. - Open, so if you don't like the interface, you can make your own. The stock web interface is fine for me. - No ads! - Trump isn't on it. If you enjoyed Twitter more in the past when real people tweeted about real things, Mastodon is definitely worth checking out.

rdschouw 8y ago

Since I’m a paying YouTube Red customer, I filed a complaint. I think if enough people write in, they’ll change their mind.

chrisjc 8y ago
Is this something you do via the YouTubeRed app or did you literally write a complaint and emailed it in? I would like to do the same.
- puzzle 8y ago
  I sent feedback from the YouTube app while on a blocked video. It gives you the options to contact them via chat, phone or email (the last one is composed all within the app, not in your email client).
- sonar_un 8y ago
  Seems like this could be a net neutrality issue?
s73v3r_ 8y ago
As a fellow paying YouTube Red customer, this hadn't occurred to me. I shall do so as well.
- tssva 8y ago
  As a fellow paying YouTube Premium user I'm glad that YouTube is taking this step to insure the long-term viability of the platform I pay to support.
  - remram 8y ago
    The step being changing their monetization policy without notice or warning, or blocking a popular channel for everyone?
  - lovich 8y ago
    You like being charged for access to videos and then videos being removed because the content creators didn't pay YouTube as well? What happened to people liking technical solutions because they could remove rent seeking middle men?

Analemma_ 8y ago

Wait, am I reading this right? If you're a particularly popular channel, you're required to monetize and YT will block you if you don't? That's ridiculous, and it's totally shooting yourself in the foot. The vast majority of creators with many views do want to monetize, YouTube is losing almost nothing by allowing people not to if they choose. They must be really be desparate for revenue over there.

quadrangle 8y ago
If I skipped Hanlon's Razor and jumped to assuming your speculations are right, then I'd say Google wants to head off a future where people specifically donate to those who aren't doing ad-monetizing (i.e. the only ones who actually deserve donations!!) Google wants creators funded, but they want the system to push their ad-focused approach. The last thing Google wants is a future where the (unethical, horrible, destructive) surveillance-capitalism-ad-tech economy goes away…
- stcredzero 8y ago
  > The last thing Google wants is a future where the (unethical, horrible, destructive) surveillance-capitalism-ad-tech economy goes away… Because the corporate culture of Google/YouTube has changed into one of authoritarian adherence. This is the natural result.
  - vkou 8y ago
    > Because the corporate culture of Google/YouTube has changed into one of authoritarian adherence. This is the natural result. Really? Is that what you've taken away from the Maven debate? There's a couple simpler, far more plausible explanations.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Really? Is that what you've taken away from the Maven debate? It's a number of observations. It's only natural that a company like YouTube would seek to monetize and shift towards the mainstream. It's what they are doing with the long tail and the creative margins which is suspect.

vorpalhex 8y ago

So YouTube created an effective monopoly through social networking, and now is abusing that position. Not surprising but disappointing. Hopefully people leave YouTube in droves and remind them that their position is not static. First time hearing of PeerTube, but looks good so far.

ucaetano 8y ago
> now is abusing that position Offering to host your videos for free and display ads along them hardly seems like "abusing that position"...
- emilfihlman 8y ago
  For free? YouTube gives Google _unparalleled_ access to what we like, how we think, what we want, ... It's the best profiling tool there is. Let's not say "for free" when we are paying a price for it already.
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    Yes, for free. You can create an account and upload as many videos as you want without paying absolutely anything. Even more, without handing over any personal information. But hey, feel free to upload your videos elsewhere.
    - Erik816 8y ago
      You're giving them content they can monetize, so it's no wonder they will let you give it to them for free.
      - ucaetano 8y ago
        > You're giving them content they can monetize Well, exactly, content they can monetize.
      - jacksmith21006 8y ago

buovjaga 8y ago

PeerTube fundraiser: https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-federated-video-platform https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free...

rainbowmverse 8y ago
For those not familiar with this fundraising platform, it appears to be legit. I asked them about it last month: https://cybre.space/@Riley/100131447697085131 https://cybre.space/@Riley/100131447697085131
- ealhad 8y ago
  It is indeed, and is quite popular in France for nonprofit or social projects.

zelon88 8y ago

I've been meaning to cancel for a while. Just got around to it and it felt amazing.

otterpro 8y ago

Why not switch to Vimeo, a well-established and stable video hosting platform? There's no advertising and no shenanigans of ads being forced on your video. The hosting is not free, but at least you have control over your videos and privacy issues. Peertube, d.tube, and other federated/decentralized streaming service are really not that reliable, at least from my experience.

teaspoons 8y ago
because it always buffers 2 seconds into a video
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
plopz 8y ago
Vimeo only accepts content that it deems "artistic". Way back in 2008, a site called stage6 shut down, at the time it was the only streaming site that allowed 1080p videos and was the go to site for video game content creators to upload videos. After it shut down many of those users tried out vimeo since they were allowing 720p videos compared to youtube's 480p. Vimeo then deleted the videos and disallowed the content. For a period, things went back to direct downloads instead of streaming, but youtube increased quality and the content shifted over with it. Edit: Apparently vimeo reversed its position in 2014. https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  Huh? The company I work for hosts all of its marketing videos on Vimeo. Are you sure about this?
  - plopz 8y ago
    I just looked it up, apparently they reversed their position in 2014. https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules https://vimeo.com/blog/post/new-upload-rules

teilo 8y ago

Great. Just when my daughter has installed Blender to learn 3D modelling.

larkeith 8y ago
You can view all the PeerTube-hosted videos in your browser at https://video.blender.org https://video.blender.org The only difference is you don't go through YouTube.
soulkito 8y ago
As someone who recently started learning Blender I recommend the YouTube channel Blender Guru. They guy makes great tutorials for both beginners and more advanced users.
- tvanantwerp 8y ago
  I will second Blender Guru as an excellent resource! (Might want to increase the playback speed though--his videos take a while...)
- teilo 8y ago
  Thanks!
dragontamer 8y ago
Look up the "Humane Rigging" set of tutorials. Its the best Blender tutorial I've found so far, but it only covers rigging. (To an insane level of detail, but its ONLY about rigging).
asteli 8y ago
I learned Blender almost a decade ago. Instrumental in my learning the application was competing in informal speed-modeling contests. They were conducted from an IRC channel, and ranged from 5 minutes to a couple hours, with random-ish topics: a chair, a pair of binoculars, boombox, etc. I am fairly certain this experience also contributed to well-developed spatial skills (mentally representing and manipulating objects). I hope you encourage your daughter along this path. :)

beiller 8y ago

Blender is the epic example of free software slowly eventually eating the big proprietary guys' lunch. Volunteers spending countless hours writing software, because they were fed up with the very high pricing point of the alternatives (Maya, 3DS). Now hopefully they can kick off the eating of large internet incumbents like Youtube, maybe using some decentralized free video sharing like PeerTube. I love watching blender tutorials. I hope this creates more competition in this space (online video hosting).

ealhad 8y ago
This is great news for PeerTube! Since Blender as an established community, I hope PeerTube will gain traction from it.
- LyndsySimon 8y ago
  In at least a small way, it already has. I'd not heard of PeerTube prior to reading this submission, and now I'm interested.
  - ealhad 8y ago
    And that's already great!
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    For what it's worth peertube is running a crowdfunding campaign now if anyone is interested: https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-federated-video-platform https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free...
  - corobo 8y ago
    Indeed! I've been intrigued enough to look into hosting an instance on a video-related domain I have knocking about
chris_wot 8y ago
It would be rather ironic if Blender was able to remove Youtube's dominance :-)

larkeith 8y ago

Direct link to blog post: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...

liveoneggs 8y ago

just host your code on github, tutorials on youtube, chats on slack, forums on reddit...

ohiovr 8y ago

YouPHPtube could be a nice option for the Blender Foundation if they don't mind paying for their bandwidth usage. It is pretty easy to install (the hard way). I'm going to make a docker container for it and the encoder sometime. One advantage is that it can use amazon s3 storage and there are instructions for setting up live streaming. AFAIK, peer tube doesn't have a live stream capability (though I realize that the blender foundation may never use such a feature).

isostatic 8y ago
I was interested. Then I looked at github > This Software must be used for Good, never Evil. It is expressly forbidden to use YouPHPTube to build porn sites, violence, racism or anything else that affects human integrity or denigrates the image of anyone. Sigh.

deltron3030 8y ago

If you're interested in Blender, but come from a ${'insert your favorite creative tool'} background, and want less cognitive load (adaption to quirks that only exist within Blender), check out Bforartists! It's a fork of Blender with better, more familiar UX and behavior. https://www.bforartists.de/ https://www.bforartists.de/

ePierre 8y ago
I didn't know this! The Blender team is working on Blender 2.8 which will bring a lot of new features, including a lot of UI changes. There was an article about some of these changes a while ago on their blog [1], and more recently a video showing a lot of these UI changes... available on the Blender Developers Youtube channel (how ironic!) [2]. [1] https://code.blender.org/2018/04/tools-toolbar-and-tool-widgets/ https://code.blender.org/2018/04/tools-toolbar-and-tool-widg... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufGqRP6Gc8&t=6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZufGqRP6Gc8&t=6s

squarefoot 8y ago

Excellent performance on all videos but one (Elephants Dream). That video hangs forever strangely reporting a total length of 10:50:04 in the lower left corner, that is, over 10 hours which is of course incorrect. Maybe a problem during upload? All other videos start immediately even in full HD; so far I've watched a couple in their entirety with no glitches at all.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

One of the huge problems with YouTube etc is the centralised nature means normal methods of telling good from bad are limited. Recently the Peppa Pig shock videos thread started up again. As a parent it does worry me - but if we had to visit "grot-peppa-porn-1234.com" before viewing the video instead of choosing "bbc.com" I think managing the problem would be easier. So, peertube is nice. Perhaps it's not the right solution still?

dang 8y ago

Url changed from https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009077941676986368 https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009077941676986368, which points to this.

scottmcdot 8y ago

Correct me if I am wrong, but if content creators take their content off YouTube and use PeerTube, does this mean that there will be separate instances of PeerTube (e.g., video.blender.org) for each channel/creator? Another example could be if ol' Pewds decided to also do this - would his content be hosted on something like video.pewdiepie.org?

andypants 8y ago
Each instance of peertube is like youtube. There can be many users and users can have many channels. You can choose which instance you want to upload to, since different instances will have different storage limits, user limits, content policies, content focus, moderation, site layout, etc. Or you can run your own instance if you want full control over your content and the site as a whole. Different instances of peertube can follow each other (doesn't have to be mutual - think twitter follow) and essentially share content to improve discoverability (think twitter timeline showing content from all the instances you follow).
- scottmcdot 8y ago
  I see, thanks for the clarification. When it came to searching for all content across all instances (in a way like how we can search all content on YouTube) is this something that would be possible?
  - executesorder66 8y ago
    According to [0]: > The administrators of a PeerTube instance can follow each other. When your PeerTube instance follows another PeerTube instance, you receive the videos preview informations from this instance. This way, you can display the videos available on your instance and on the instances you decided to follow. So you keep control of the videos displayed on your PeerTube instance! [0] https://joinpeertube.org/en/ https://joinpeertube.org/en/
  - andypants 8y ago
    You would need to find an instance of peertube that is following all other instances. There are several peertubes that try to follow as many other instances as possible, but there will always be private or unadvertised instances. If nobody knows a particular instance exists, then nobody can follow it and its content won't be discoverable.

consultSKI 8y ago

Cool.

davidparks21 8y ago

Does this have anything to do with Google removing their "Don't be evil" trademark? Maybe huh?

lerax 8y ago

Wow this really cool! Never saw PeerTube before. It's UI is far away better than Youtube!

nunez 8y ago

I can't wait for a real competitor to YouTube to pop up.

RIMR 8y ago

I never thought I would see the day that Google removed Big Buck Bunny, the definitive copyleft short film, on copyright infringment grounds, against the actual creators, and there would actually be some argument over whether or not this was proper....

EastSmith 8y ago

I would love to buy a preinstalled peertube instance on a Raspberry Pi and plug it in somewhere around the house.

mmozeiko 8y ago
From https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/doc/production.md https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/support/... > Please don't install PeerTube for production on a small device behind a low bandwidth connection (example: a Raspberry PI behind your ADSL link) because it could slow down the fediverse.
- dudeofx 8y ago
  I am looking for a technical explanation. Would this be because of fear of establishing a precedence where if a lot of people did that you'd have a situation of a lot of leechers but few seeders. If thats the case, its the same situation where you have a lot of users watching videos on a server. The server can limit membership to protect itself I suppose but a personal instance would be better then a user that just watches but does not contribute. I suppose somebody could make a RPI client that becomes a member to one or more instances and just downloads. Just let the servers protect themselves by limiting use here and there.

app4soft 8y ago

:-/ This PeerTube-based Blender's webpage NOT working in Links2[0] (or any other browser without JavaScript) and Pale Moon[1,2]. [0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009218500383080449 https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009218500383080449 [1] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009208842494906368 https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1009208842494906368 [2] https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/675 https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/675

duskwuff 8y ago
Uhh... it's a streaming video site. It's not going to be viewable in a terminal-based browser, regardless of whether it uses JS or not.

nkoren 8y ago

Okay, the Youtube/political angle of this is pretty horrendous and is deserving of discussion. But they pose a question about Peertube: how well does it hold? In my limited testing from central San Francisco: it doesn't. Which makes me sad. Anybody have any insight into the pros/cons/ultimate performance/scalability limits for Peertube? Is the flakiness a function of immature technology or inviable technology?

gravypod 8y ago
For video serving encoding technology is good enough that we don't actually have to shovel that much data over the network. Latency is the biggest issue from what I understand. Most of the amazing work google has done to make youtube fast is the magic behind google's omni-presence established world wide. Like they say in the post they have one datacenter in the EU serving this content. If they used AWS and spun up an instance serving content from every AWS region available the performance would be much better. I was able to play the video but it lagged a bit to get started until I was able to find peers near me. This is likely a latency thing to the remote host in the EU. PeerTube should scale much more easily than a conventional site because viewers, I assume, are peers of the content. More people looking at something means more people serving that content. The biggest con is that if you're viewing the video you're shoveling data to other viewers which, previously, you've likely not done. I hope more people try things like this tech.
- lev99 8y ago
  I will always gladly trade a reasonable amount of upload bandwidth to avoid advertisements.
  - sonar_un 8y ago
    Yes, but because of the highly asynchronous bandwidth we have available trading an even little bit up upload bandwidth can be extremely detrimental to internet performance.
    - deleted 8y ago

sumanthvepa 8y ago

It seems to me that YouTube's business model is ad supported. They need to run ads to pay for infrastructure to support the service and make profit for themselves, since they are not charging the user. So a sufficiently large channel that does not permit ads will eat into their revenues.i.e. it becomes an expensive free rider. This, I guess, is the reason behind the decision. I suppose it makes sense. But I don't see why they don't offer a paid option to entities like Blender who don't want ads?

em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
Actually YouTube has started a patronage "Sponsorship" system, where users pay $5 a month to support a channel (and get "perks").
- sumanthvepa 8y ago
  Yes. But this puts the burden on blender's viewers. That may not result in sufficient revenue. (Generally charging the viewer is not a winning revenue generation strategy.) The creator may more resources to pay and definitely more incentive.
- film42 8y ago
  I've been sponsoring a channel for a few months now but still find that youtube runs ads on their videos. I guess the perks are for exclusive live chats and stuff. Still, it's better than not having a sponsorship system.
CamperBob2 8y ago
More to the point, why don't they go ahead and permit those of us who are paying them -- i.e., YouTube Red subscribers -- to view the blocked videos?
- sumanthvepa 8y ago
  I suspect that that would not result in sufficient revenue to offset the costs of hosting Blender's videos.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

The next step will be that you won't be indexed by Google's web search engine if you don't have AdSense for Content ads. Why? Because the steam is going out of Google's ad business[1], and Google has no other business. They have added just about all of the advertising on their own pages they can get away with and they started by squeezing channels with fewer than 4k views a month, and now their squeezing channels that choose not to show ads. Thinks about what this means in the big picture, Google cannot get enough people showing ads on their videos to support people who choose not to show ads. What percentage of Youtube videos don't show ads? 5% ? 10%? Don't hate me for it, but my prediction is that the next lifeline Google will reach for will be charging money for turn by turn directions in maps. They really need to find some way other than search ads to make money. [1] This is hyperbole, I don't think they will deindex sites but I can see it affecting the page rank.

cwyers 8y ago
> Google cannot get enough people showing ads on their videos to support people who choose not to show ads. Or maybe they just don't want to.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  That is possible, but I think it unlikely based on the following reasoning, if you are watching a video without an ad on Youtube, when it finishes they have an opportunity to share a bunch of similar videos that you might like, ones that do have ads. If you end up not going to Youtube at all because the ad free video is hosted elsewhere they lose that opportunity to "sell" you on a video with an advert in it. When I was at Blekko we were analyzing this sort of thing pretty hard. We found that a web page with no ads could point to pages with ads and that the expected rate of return on traffic to the ad free page could be calculated (it was non-zero revenue). I would agree that is only a proxy for browsing behavior as the Youtube example consumes resources for the ad free video as well, but unless YouTube has even worse monetization than the most cynical predictions, I would guess it would be worth it to have the Ad free video surrounded by suggestions.
laser 8y ago

rurounijones 8y ago

So I had a look at Peertube and had the friendly reminder "The sharing system used by this video implies that some technical information about your system (such as a public IP address) can be accessed publicly." Which is then expanded on in an about page: "PeerTube uses the BitTorrent protocol to share bandwidth between users. It implies that your public IP address is stored in the public BitTorrent tracker of the video PeerTube instance as long as you're watching the video. If you want to keep your public IP address private, please use a VPN or Tor. " Seems like a large privacy leak that can be exploited by anyone who signs up to the tracker. Requiring a VPN or Tor just for privacy from other users seems like an excessive requirement.

guelo 8y ago
That's what peer to peer means.
- rurounijones 8y ago
  Peertube doesn't necessarily mean "Peer to Peer with Bittorrent". The "Peer" could just refer to the federated nature of the servers. Even then "Peer to Peer" technical details can be lost on people. Still, kudos to them to actually bring this to the forefront but I won't be using it.
lev99 8y ago
Is there a reason I don't want to expose my public IP address? Every server I connect to knows my IP address. Connecting to bittorrent would give you the following information: * Key (IP) to connect to other data sources (but joins will be dirty, IP addresses change, people use multiple ip address, multiple people use the same ip address). * ISP name * Rough location (mine says I'm in a suburb about 20 miles away, when I'm actually in the city) * Which files you have and are willing to share. * Which files you are requesting. There is no PII, and the only thing interesting would be to do location analysis or to try to cluster the files based on taste (people that watch movie A are likely to also watch movie B)
- 8y ago

0xcde4c3db 8y ago

Does PeerTube provide a way to have any server other than the originating instance act as a tracker/seed? The readme diagrams make it seem like the long-term video hosting is still effectively centralized, with only metadata being federated.

tcit 8y ago
It is planned.

atotic 8y ago

All Blender needs to do is to publish a few videos that offend everyone, and get demonetized. Problem solved!

arenaninja 8y ago

I've noticed a trend on reddit to link outside of YT for short clips. I hope the pace picks up, I get the impression that YT is actively hostile to a lot of content

Rapzid 8y ago

The most shocking thing to me is that YouTube didnt't have the presience to handle Blender with better care..

DoctorOetker 8y ago

Influencers MUST CO-OPERATE!

iamleppert 8y ago

One reason why I will never, ever work at Google. They are a reprehensible company on so many levels.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

greydata 8y ago

https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/21/an-offer-creators-cant-refuse/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/21/an-offer-creators-cant-ref...

dingo_bat 8y ago

They should just seed a nice torrent for all their videos.

Endy 8y ago

Am I the only one who thinks it would be better if Blender uploaded directly to archive.org or archive.is? As much as it's interesting on a technical level, the fact that PeerTube is by nature decentralized and self-hosted is going to reduce Blender's overall visibility (which is what I think Alphabet/Google wants). Whether Alphabet is still making any money off SketchUp, or whether one of the 3D companies is paying them something, I think this move was intentionally targeted on their part. And unfortunately, like most of the things that have happened ever since Google completely dropped the first word from "Don't Be Evil", I'm terrified that they're going to win.

codelord 8y ago
What is terrifying about this? Why should Google pay for hosting and distributing your video online forever without making any money? How's that "evil"?
- bordercases 8y ago
  Monopoly of convenience and loyalty capture There's no good reason why, but that's why we try to regulate monopolies
  - notroot 8y ago
    There are a lot of good reasons why monopolies should be regulated.
    - bordercases 8y ago
      I meant why Google should pay for hosting free stuff
- Krasnol 8y ago
  You are absolutely right! Google has been suffering under all this user generated content dragging even more visitors to their already struggling hosting infrastructure for too long! It's time for relief! Let's move the burden of user generated content away and let others suffer! Free Google!

em3rgent0rdr 8y ago

Blender is running their PeerTube test from a European datacenter. I wonder what will happen to the legality of hosting a PeerTube site with public uploads if EU's upload filter law gets passed. Also I wonder how the GDPR will affect them (and anyone else hosting PeerTube in Europe or with EU users)...won't they need to get explicit consent from everyone for getting things like user IP address (so they can protect against spam and DDoS attacks) and won't they have a tough time ensuring everyone who uploads could delete their videos?

jamescyber 8y ago

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jameslk 8y ago

PeerTube is using WebTorrent for videos. This means user's IPs are exposed to other users. Wouldn't it be possible to abuse this to track others by associating IPs with types of videos/content viewed?

etatoby 8y ago

From Google's point of view, the Blender Foundation are the bad guys. They host a very popular channel on their servers, using up a lot of bandwidth, storage, and resources, they don't pay a cent to the hosting provider, and on top of that, they actively try to prevent their content from paying up for itself. I don't see it as shocking that Google is forcing them to enable ads. What I find surprising is that Google did not see this coming and thus A. never limited ad-free content to small channels in their ToS, and B. does not provide a paid hosting option.

krolley 8y ago
This is a totally fair point. But wouldn't it make more sense to either (a) continue to pay the hosting costs to stay known as the 'one true place' to find online videos, or (b) allow the Blender Foundation to pay to host their vidoes on YouTube if they want to stay ad-free?
- OskarS 8y ago
  Yeah, I totally agree. It's a very bad look for them to essentially disallow ad-free non-profits if they get popular enough. Given how small of a segment this is (the vast majority of massively popular channels monetize, after all), and the fact that they already have the infrastructure to support it, it should be a no-brainer for them to keep Blender on. The reputation cost is clearly worse than the actual loss in hosting costs here. However, they're a big company, and it makes sense that they have a policy of "if your channel is big enough, you have to put ads on it to support hosting cost". Making policy exceptions in a big company like this is tricky, and it seems Blender just fell through the cracks.
nctorn 8y ago
Those popular channels, is what drives customer acquisition and stickiness at YouTube. The costs associated to this are simply marketing costs, so I think it’s just greedy to charge your content providers to drive down the retention and acquisition costs.
Already__Taken 8y ago
The minute I can't just find everything on youtube though their entire model begins to go down the toilet. What's that going to cost them.

akerro 8y ago

They should publish everything on IPFS too, maybe even peertube should support IPFS.

AsyncAwait 8y ago

PeerTube is awesome and needs more visibility. Coincidentally, they're having a fundraiser right now to be able to ship a 1.0, so if you like the idea of a federated, decentralized YouTube alternative that can also talk to other ActivityPub software like Mastodon etc. consider donating[1]. 1 - https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-federated-video-platform https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free...

ealhad 8y ago
And you should also consider contributing! It’s Typescript on client and server. https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube

ariwilson 8y ago

The comments here are more interesting than the article itself. Looks like the real issue was a UX snafu on YouTube's part that support had trouble resolving for too long. Let's hope YouTube does better in the future. However, if you read the comments here, they paint a sinister portrait of YouTube that has nothing to do with Blender's issue. Some examples: - ads are required for big channels (false) - demonetization of content creators (unrelated) - anti-trust based on search or social networking (unrelated) - SketchUp is blocking YouTube videos (false) We might as well change Hacker News from an article based format to a topic based format if everyone is just going to bring in their unrelated and false pet peeves to every discussion.

jobigoud 8y ago
This is because this issue with Blender is just a cherry on top of a multitude of issues with YouTube that have crop up for the past few years. So the thread is about the impact of YouTube algorithms. I have myself found it pretty hard to publish videos without ads on YouTube, even though I have a minuscule channel. Their Content ID system is triggered for almost any background music I throw at it, including Royalty Free or CC-BY music. The insidious part is that the videos are not taken down, they just put ads on top of it while you try to refute the claim, even if you tick the "I do not want ads to appear" box. The problem in this instance is anyone can upload a piece of audio and claim copyright on it, and video are then automatically flagged. There is an interesting support thread about paid-for, Royalty-free classical music, that shows how outrageous the system is: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/iMlPyMqNhq8 https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/iMlPy...
- boernard 8y ago
  the 'interesting support thread' is more than 8 years old...
  - jobigoud 8y ago
    And yet the problem remains. There are topics about fake claimants, false positives and wrongly blocked videos all over the place.

dosshell 8y ago

Wait, is it really solved now? I get the following error for many videos: > This video contains content from BlenderFoundation. It is not available in your country. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kes2qmijy7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kes2qmijy7w and all other videos in "Blender Fundamentals" playlist. I'm located in Sweden.

thisacctforreal 8y ago
Same error and message in Canada.
rainbowmverse 8y ago
Same in the US.

yboris 8y ago

Blender videos are back: https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009358627839381505 https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1009358627839381505 Read about the chain of coincidences, bad UIs, wrong error messages, ignorant support desks and being non-standard here: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...

microcolonel 8y ago

You know, the value proposition of YouTube Red/Premium (extra features in the Android app, no ads on any device) is just starting to blossom as YouTube alienates a major portion of their most productive creators, in an apparent bid to build yet another TV channel nobody wants to watch or pay for.

testcross 8y ago

Reminder that PeerTube is doing a crowdfunding to develop the project further. Available at https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-federated-video-platform/ https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free...

saredust 8y ago

Hello, start earning by paid surveys. http://www.clixsense.com/?8172285 http://www.clixsense.com/?8172285

DpdC 8y ago

YOUTUBE STOP PAYING MILLIONS OF CREATORS WITH SMALL INCOME BY THE FACE, BY THE FACE. WITH YOUR CHANGES NOW ADD METHODS OF PAYMENT, AND NOW YOU WANT TO REDUCE CHARGES. Well if that is not to take advantage of the user. What is it?