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PeerTube: A ‘Censorship’ Resistent YouTube Alternative
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- testcross 8y agoThere is a crowdfunding going on. It already reached its goal. But there is a second goal at 45K. 11 days to go. Please help! https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free-and-federated-video-platform https://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/peertube-a-free...
- toomuchtodo 8y agoAre you involved with the project? Have they explored any EU grants that may be available for open source and creative development?
- godzillabrennus 8y agoWhile not for the EU... If anyone in the USA is looking for grants checkout http://interkn.com http://interkn.com to search for them based on keywords.
- testcross 8y agoNo, I'm not involved. Can't tell you unfortunately.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoNo worries, I will get in touch with the non-profit responsible for PeerTube.
- tjoff 8y agoThis seems to focus alot on being a youtube alternative. But for someone looking as something similar to youtube but locked down and only for friends and family it's a bit unclear whether this is appropriate (since so much is focused on sharing the content with other servers). Also, for such a use case the torrent-functionality seems like a real downside but I can't find out if you can disable it serverside so that clients don't have to bother with it.
- PretzelFisch 8y agoIf it's just for friends and family why not setup a plex server?
- ekianjo 8y agoOr Nextcloud as well.
- tjoff 8y agoPlex has a weird centralization of accounts that frankly disgusts me. In combination of a closed source solution makes it even worse. I chose Emby instead. But both Emby and Plex (as well as nextcloud) are poor youtube alternatives in my eyes - at least for the scenario I'm thinking of. Neither (correct me if I'm wrong) allows for comments for instance, and have a cumbersome interface for youtube-like watching and discovering.
- otini 8y agoPeerTube initially aims precisely at being a Youtube alternative, which is why such questions are not tackled in the article I guess. However federation with other servers is totally controlled by admin-defined rules, so you can make a “private” instance. I'm not sure whether making videos watchable by logged-in users only is already possible but it's a very easy thing to implement. As for the torrenting, if videos are only available to members it shouldn't be a privacy problem. That being said, disabling it will probably be a possibility in v1.0.
- tjoff 8y agoThanks, yeah but it's hard to find these answers at the project site as well. The privacy problem wasn't my concern. But rather a bloated javascript client as well as the issue of accidentally seeding on a mobile connection wasting bandwidth and battery life. I see tons of potential issues but no possible gains at all when server bandwidth is not an issue.
- detaro 8y ago
- TomK32 8y agoAnyone with exp using peertube for product videos on a small-ish scale? Is it worth having all those extra features? I'm soon starting to create videos for my startup and peertube is certainly what I am thinking about, besides just hosting the mp4 files directly.
- harlanji 8y agoI built a system for people in similar situations... iSpooge Live, working on first easy release, seeking flexible early adopters. Self hosted, designed for RasPi/non-cloud DCs w Docker, now running on AWS. Tools are all CLI static gen, to serve from CDN. I self host a “video platforms compared” video and other demos, with VideoJS player. Contact info in profile if you wanna chat more... my goal is hands-off SDK.
- Dowwie 8y agoWithout advertising revenue, what incentive do many of these content creators have to participate? These alternative systems are unsustainable.
- pjc50 8y agoPlenty of people will post videos e.g. promoting racial hatred or Islamic State for free, especially on an censorship-resistant service.
- Wertyol 8y agoFree speech is a good thing. Scared of IS propaganda? Deal with the root issues that cause it instead.
- godelski 8y agoBlender and OCW weren't monetizing their channels on YouTube... Some people just want to share their content. Not everyone is in it for the money.
- patrickaljord 8y agoBlender receives millions of dollars in donation and OCW is backed my MIT which gets billions of dollars in revenue. How is that comparable to starting creators who want to build a career? Also Blender and OCW don't need peertube as their content is very unlikely to get censored on youtube.
- DanBC 8y ago> Also Blender and OCW don't need peertube as their content is very unlikely to get censored on youtube. Maybe you missed the news, but Blender had all their videos blocked for several days.
- GyYZTfWBfQw 8y agohttps://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blender-videos-worldwide/ https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...
- Justsignedup 8y agoThe problem that peer tube can not solve is the youtube suggestions and stability. - As a business I will link to a youtube video but not a PT video because I know YT will stay up. - Most YT's views are from recommendations and related videos. PT can't compete against that. Just can't. Especially since YT will never recommend a PT video. This is why a single source wins. :(
- toomuchtodo 8y agoIf PeerTube instances are federated, and video metadata is publicly available, anyone can compete to offer a portal to PeerTube. As a business, it is shortsighted to prefer link to a YT video that can be removed or deleted just as easily as a PeerTube video. My YT playlists are littered with deleted or otherwise removed videos. The only way to ensure a video you link to never disappears is to rip it and host it yourself.
- otini 8y agoPeertube has other advantages, among which interoperability. A relevant quote from the main developer: “Where it gets really, really exciting, is that when you respond to a video status on Mastodon, the message will be sent to the instance of PeerTube. Your response will thus be visible beneath the video, in the comment space. And yes, if another person at the other end of the world responds to your comment via their instance of PeerTube or Mastodon, you’ll see it as a response to your status in Mastodon. If tomorrow Diaspora (the Facebook alternative behind Framasphere) implements ActivityPub, it will work in the same way. We’ll have plenty of platforms that are capable of federating comments. Free alternatives are criticized, often rightly, for not having added value compared to centralized platforms. With ActivityPub, we now have our first big advantage. Because on the centralized platforms, you’ll have a hard time viewing, under your YouTube video, the reactions of people who commented on Facebook, Twitter, etc. ” source: https://medium.com/@chocobozzz/peertube-a-federated-video-streaming-platform-fa90e6c503df https://medium.com/@chocobozzz/peertube-a-federated-video-st...
- amelius 8y agoQuestion: how does moderation work in ActivityPub?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- PretzelFisch 8y agoIn the article PeerTube is presented as a YouTube alternative. I don't see how this can be the case if I have host the videos and pay all the costs that come with it.
- otini 8y agoOnly if you want to be in control of your videos and don't want to use your audience's personal data as a payment to Youtube. You can also host them on a PeerTube instance run by someone you trust (several non-profits already maintain one).
- PretzelFisch 8y agoWhere can I find a list of them?
- otini 8y agohttps://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/
- andypants 8y agoYou have to do that anyways, when you want to host content. Uploading something to youtube is the opposite of 'hosting content'.
- tyfon 8y agoAny peertubers here doing let's plays? I have some on youtube, but it's just a hobby and I don't monetise it, but because of that I have a feeling that it's being scored lower in the youtube ranks. However I have not seen any dedicated let's play peertube hubs and most only have a tiny allotment of upload space. There is one with unlimited, https://peertube.social/ https://peertube.social/, however I'm not confident that it will stay that way and I'm not sure how happy they would be if I started uploading terrabytes of video. Does anyone know of hubs specifically for this sort of content?
- rigelk 8y agoThere is https://videos.lecygnenoir.info/about https://videos.lecygnenoir.info/about - you can contact him on https://miaou.drycat.fr/@lecygnenoirgame https://miaou.drycat.fr/@lecygnenoirgame Not sure he still has slots open though
- tyfon 8y agoI'll check it out. Seems to be a bit french though for the moment and I'm not that well spoken in french :) That brings another thing to mind, I tend to output stuff from Kdenlive with CRF 12 which results in quite high bitrate for 1080p (~25 mbit). Youtube just eats up the video files and transcodes them to all kinds of resolutions, but it also trashes the quality. I wonder how peertube deals with that. Guess I can set up a local instance and test a bit first :)
- jameslk 8y agoPeerTube exposes the IPs of all viewers who watch videos[0]. This is a privacy issue that's baked into its design. For example, this allows for anyone to track the content viewing history of IPs. I see this being a big hurdle for any mainstream adoption. 0. https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/316 https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/316
- otini 8y agoWe could discuss the possible workarounds for this, but let's not forget that in terms of privacy, Youtube has its own by-design flaws as well. The company gathers much precise data about viewers than Peertube does.
- JoshMnem 8y agoExposing your IP address to the public is much more risky than exposing it to Google.
- josteink 8y agoI don’t think that’s a verbatim claim you can just make and expect everyone to agree with without any form of argument. Counter-argument one: things known by Google represents another dose of data into a single place which accumulates way too much of it already. If I watch something on a peertube, many may know that my IP streamed that, but they don’t know who I am because they’re not an all knowing internet-scale privacy-violator. Best of all, google won’t know I watched it at all, so it won’t be another annoying data-point in the super-aggressive youtube bubble.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- asfasgasg 8y ago> Best of all, google won’t know I watched it at all Why do you think that? It would be very easy for Google to observe who is viewing PeerTube videos and to link that back to those people's YouTube profiles. You may trust them not to, but if you do, it seems you're half way to thinking it's OK for them to know.
- rolandog 8y agoI've been using it for a couple of days, and I've gotta say I'm impressed at the high quality of the service, and the integration with Activity Feeds (e.g. Mastodon) elsewhere.
- bufferoverflow 8y agoWhat happens when someone uploads child porn?
- otini 8y agoThe uploader will be banned and their content removed, and hopefully will have to deal with the police. If a PeerTube instance is too laxist about its moderation policy, other instances will stop federating (federation is opt-in and decided by the admins).
- bufferoverflow 8y agoSo how can they call it "censorship resistant" if you can just ban users and delete their content?
- fulafel 8y agoCheck out the "Who is responsible for content published on PeerTube? " bit in the faq at https://joinpeertube.org/en/faq/ https://joinpeertube.org/en/faq/
- s73v3r_ 8y agoBanning and choosing not to point at something are two different things.
- nodja 8y agoThe platform is censorship resistant. Individual instances are not. If you upload something to a specific instance, you are at the mercy of the instance owner. But you can upload to other more "open-minded" instances or host your own. Moderation is necessary, otherwise you'll attract "undesirables" that will most likely scare away regular users.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThe person responsible for that PeerTube instance would have to remove it, and hopefully ban the user and report them to the authorities.
- tssva 8y agoNot showing your videos because you don't want to contribute financially to the for profit platform you chose to host them on is not censorship.
- sverige 8y agoOf course you're right, but it's also right to say that it's shitty when the for profit platform has more money than many small countries and insists that everyone must show their ads all the time. The money that the for profit platform makes comes from taking an obscene amount of data from its users and selling it to the companies that want to advertise. We haven't even discussed whether the money that the for profit platform pays the content creators that drive traffic to its advertising engine is proportionate or fair. There's no discussion of this anywhere, really, since the for profit platform is so powerful that some people are literally afraid to criticize them in public. And let's not even broach the subject of whether the for profit platform might be using its users' data for things other than advertising. That would be really beyond the pale conspiracy theory type paranoia. But you're right. It's not censorship. Only the government can do that.
- echotango 8y ago>There's no discussion of this anywhere, really, since the for profit platform is so powerful that some people are literally afraid to criticize them in public. Really? Every other article about Google is criticizing how much data they collect. Meanwhile, websites are literally being blacklisted via the Domain Name System (by Google specifically) for undesirable political speech. So much for only governments can engage in censorship.
- echotango 8y agoThe author even put the word in single quotes because he knew it wasn't really censorship, but still used the word anyway because everyone likes being the victim. Although, before the hive-mind downvote squad gets me too, I must say PeerTube is still a great idea.
- lsc 8y agoHow do they solve the torrent liability problem? My understanding is that if you download something via torrent, you are also uploading/distributing, and as I understand it, that makes your liability rather higher if the content happens to be illegal - you are not just in trouble for downloading/possessing said content, but you are also in trouble for distribution of said content. I thought this was a big part of the rise of 'tube sites' for questionable content.
- isaachier 8y agoResistant
- polski-g 8y agoHow is this better than bitchute?
- andrewchambers 8y agoI can't see how this could be a youtube alternative without ads. Ads are how youtubers survive and make videos full time.