11 ms·

PeerTube v2

455 points by jeremiem 7y ago

solf1re 7y ago
can anyone tdlr peertube vs lbry?
- cyborgx7 7y ago
  Peertube is a feration protocol for YouTube-like video hosts to interact with eachother. Or more precisely, it's an implementation of ActivityPub, like Mastodon, focused on video hosting. LBRY appears to be some kind of cryptocurrency thing. I don't know. Looks shady.
  - solf1re 7y ago
    Thanks for the response, not sure why my request had been downvoted :/ I've used LBRY in the past, its decentralised video hosting as I understand it. But also allows for content producers to monetise their stuff. kauffj mentions it above - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513640
mikece 7y ago
The peer-to-peer storage and sharing of video files isn't the hard part: it's the ability to search for and discover content that makes YouTube compelling in my opinion. Are any of these p2p YouTube replacements presenting a compelling way to search/discover content in a distributed way? Or if the search index is centralized, do any of them have a compelling model for staying funded without selling everyone's search/catalog information to data brokers?
- kauffj 7y ago
  You could look at LBRY (https://lbry.tech https://lbry.tech https://lbry.com https://lbry.com https://beta.lbry.tv https://beta.lbry.tv). LBRY is similar to PeerTube in open and decentralization, but all content metadata is written to a blockchain, which means everyone/anyone can access the index. This blockchain can then be searched (https://github.com/lbryio/lighthouse https://github.com/lbryio/lighthouse) or extracted to SQL (https://github.com/lbryio/chainquery https://github.com/lbryio/chainquery).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - olah_1 7y ago
    Sadly, LBRY isn't able to track view counts. Which makes organic, network effects really difficult. Maybe they could implement a naive "view tracking" by having the client do small proof of work when they interact with content? Similar to voting in NotaBug? https://github.com/notabugio/notabug https://github.com/notabugio/notabug
- jasode 7y ago
  > Are any of these p2p YouTube replacements presenting a compelling way to search/discover content in a distributed way? Being "distributed" over p2p/federated architecture opposes the end-user convenience of search/discovery/ranking/recommendations because of speed-of-light limitations. I wrote a previous comment about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17578332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17578332 Also, the previous last reply by posting2fast of a partial-centralized server doesn't really replace Youtube because his proposed idea creates new problems of spam videos and untrusted/fake videos. E.g. the central index of metadata says "www.johndoehomeserver.com" has a tutorial video for Algebra but when you actually stream the video from "johndoehomeserver.com", you get a spam video for Viagra instead of math instruction. Therefore, users will naturally gravitate toward the centralized servers that have both the metadata and the actual video content. This emergent group behavior of preferences would end up recreating another "Youtube"-like clone. p2p architecture and torrents works well for things like pirated Photoshop or ripped Marvel Avengers movies because the users already have the content's title _preloaded_ in their brain and therefore a centralized index for discovery/serendipity of unknown content isn't necessary.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tiborsaas 7y ago
    It does not necessarily oppose it. All there needs to be done is to expose a static, daily generated JSON file that contains all videos on the instance. This has nothing to do with the speed of light. Anyone then could build a search index and build a good search experience. To combat spam, instances should reveal up/downvotes to indicate quality, I guess your fake math video would not get much love from the community.
    - jasode 7y ago
      >This has nothing to do with the speed of light. Please take extra care to correctly parse what I actually wrote in response to the gp. Yes, speed-of-light is still a limitation based on the gp's constraint of "search/discovery in a _distributed_ way" which means the search algorithm avoids central servers and loops through a bunch of remote p2p nodes to parse a bunch of exposed JSON manifest files. If instead, the search algorithm loops through data in a cached index server, that's no longer "search in a distributed way" that the gp was originally wondering about. That's the particular point I was responding to. >Anyone then could build a search index and build a good search experience. Now, as to the issue with that "cache index server" that pre-parses the JSON files... The cache server that also contains the actual video data will naturally attract the most users because when they hit the "play" button on their smartphone, the video starts immediately instead of waiting or suffering stuttering from somebody's flakey home video server. So, the index server with the "good experience" as perceived by users will be the one that also includes the actual videos -- basically acts as a CDN -- and this emergent behavior of user preferences defeats the decentralized ideals of p2p video. We see that p2p of things like illegal software already works and is proven. However, p2p of mainstream videos has massive technical hurdles that oppose how typical users like to discover content and play them with immediate gratification.
- dmos62 7y ago
  Well that's the real problem when you start competing with Google and the like. They're data behemoths. As long as you don't have as much data collected, they'll have a significant advantage. The solution to this is really simple and hardly conceivable at the same time: make competitively important data public. In this case, that's anonymized video browsing/viewing data. Market competition would flourish, the big guys would lose the monopoly.
  - pault 7y ago
    But then who will be incentivized to gather the data?
    - dmos62 7y ago
      Anyone who needs more, I guess? Or, is the premise that gathering data is resource intensive (like innovation and patents for example)? These aren't big problems, I think. The problem is that the people who hold the monopolies on data at the moment are also the people who are extremely powerful lobyists.
  - boomboomsubban 7y ago
    >In this case, that's anonymized video browsing/viewing data So the view count publicly available and something like the Google search analytics already available? Personalized data offers a huge competitive advantage.
    - dmos62 7y ago
      Personalized (as in per user) and anonymized are not mutually exclusive.
      - boomboomsubban 7y ago
        Sure, but non-anonymized personalized data still provides a competitive advantage.
- arkh 7y ago
  > discover content Discover heavily sponsored content from content farms. As an experiment, even with an old account, start just browsing the content Youtube highlights. You will soon end with a recommendation page full of shit with 500K+ views using the same template.
  - glennpratt 7y ago
    I don't understand your point; garbage in, garbage out. I have a very old account and browse suggestions using my brain, not randomly. While not perfect, almost every recommendation right now looks like something I could watch. Bicycling, civil engineering, cat toys, and weird metal music mashups, which are all similar to things I intentionally watched, but haven't watched.
- velcrovan 7y ago
  > Are any of these p2p YouTube replacements presenting a compelling way to search/discover content in a distributed way? Ideally we’d see blogs return as the curated content mediators.
sschueller 7y ago
I love this project and that is sets the focus on providing a video platform as its primary goal ignoring implementing monetizaion like crypto tokens etc. for now. Many thanks to all the people who worked hard on getting PeerTube to what it is today.
kgraves 7y ago
Great work! This is a good YouTube alternative I can get behind, however after reading a little bit I kind of frowned at this line on the plugin paragraph. > You could also imagine plug-ins to sort videos in reverse alphabetical order, or to add a Tipee, Paypal or Patreon button below videos! Please don't consider or be tempted by those three proprietary platforms, I would much rather prefer donating using Liberapay instead. Other than this, PeerTube has got huge potential and I would love to know what content creators (on YT or HN) think of it.
- celticninja 7y ago
  Perhaps reach out and let them know about it
- csunbird 7y ago
  I think you can add any plugin you want, which can include all kinds of payment buttons.
- vanous 7y ago
  Unfortunately, there is no alternative. Everybody uses PayPal or Stripe on the backend...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - krageon 7y ago
    > Everybody uses PayPal or Stripe Are you implying that there are literally no other payment platforms than ones that reduce to PayPal or Stripe?
    - vanous 7y ago
      Unfortunately yes. Look at Librepay's "How it works for creators" paragraph: "We currently support processing payments through Stripe and PayPal."
- Deukhoofd 7y ago
m12k 7y ago
Does anyone know of a successful server-based peer-to-peer project other than TOR and cryptocurrencies? I'm all for breaking free of the stranglehold of centralized proprietary platforms, but it also seems to me that most of the open source projects that ever really succeed at competing against entrenched proprietary incombents are the ones where a centralized service is being provided by a non-profit (e.g. Wikimedia Foundation, Mozilla, Canonical). Maybe expecting people to set up a server is just a bridge too far? Maybe there's just too many conveniences in centralization for todays users to put up with the hassle? Maybe there needs to be a centralized server that is as easy to use as the proprietary ones, and then the hardcore users can set up their own and federate with the central one?
- cyborgx7 7y ago
  E-Mail
  - m12k 7y ago
    Right, and web servers too - neither had much competition when it launched though, so the point about no being able to beat incumbent proprietary solutions still stands. Not to mention the majority of people get their email hosted by a proprietary service these days.
    - cyborgx7 7y ago
      >neither had much competition when it launched though I'm sceptikal as well, about a federated protocol being able to replace an existing entrenched player. Buy I still hope. >Not to mention the majority of people get their email hosted by a proprietary service these days. But all the proprietary services talk to eachother, and, mostly, talk to private instances as well. There are absolutely allowed to be proprietary PeerTube instances.
  - stereolambda 7y ago
    This is interesting as when the subject of setting up your own server comes up, people always complain how much of a hassle it is to maintain sender reputation with Gmail and Outlook. This leads me to two thoughts/questions: 1. Maybe successful decentralization schemes should be made providing for some peers that will be private for-profit? I know that (for example) IPFS encourages building services. 2. What could we do to ensure that small private peers will continue to be viable, even if some large for-profit peers will dominate? Of course such measures should be reasonably resistant to being used by bad spammy/illegal actors etc. ("Bad actors being bad" is always a handy rhetoric for overcentralization, but the problem itself should be obviously addressed.)
gillesjacobs 7y ago
In the space of distributed video platforms, I think Peertube has the right idea: Bitchute is gaining a lot of traction, but the core issue of centralized control remains. Distributed content delivery is not enough to prevent censorship and viewer manipulation. Federation will allow many platforms to proliferate and solves this problem. I hope Peertube gains traction, but they're fighting an uphill battle when it comes to the centralized competition. The problem that PeerTube cannot solve is engagement and stability: - Engagement: Unlike Youtube they cannot use a recommender system like for suggestions. Most Youtube views are from recommendations and related videos. - Stability: As a business or media outlet, I will link to a Youtube video but not a PeerTube video because I know Youtube will host it indefinitely.
- kaffeemitsahne 7y ago
  >- Engagement: Unlike Youtube they cannot use a recommender system like for suggestions. Most Youtube views are from recommendations and related videos I won't be missing yt's recommendations at all. If peertube can implement related videos only based on the current video and nothing else, that would be great though.
- JoshuaDavid 7y ago
  I wonder if a decentralized recommendation system is really impossible though. If it's possible to get a user to rate and classify a few videos along some dimensions, and made those classifications public, it might be possible to find other users who similarly classified those videos and recommend videos based on the ratings of those similar users. This would mitigate many attempts at censorship, though it probably worsens echo chamber issues. Also, a new platform doesn't have to solve every problem with the old one to be an improvement. Decentralized content delivery with a centralized recommendation engine might still be enough to compete if centralized content delivery platforms screw up badly enough.
- yorwba 7y ago
  > Stability: As a business or media outlet, I will link to a Youtube video but not a PeerTube video because I know Youtube will host it indefinitely. If you want the video to stay up indefinitely (or at least as long as your company continues operating) you should probably host it yourself (e.g. on your own PeerTube instance), because YouTube might take it down whenever they feel like it.
tiborsaas 7y ago
Is there a search engine to look for content across all instances?
timwaagh 7y ago
It seems like they did not consider how they want peertubers to be able to monetize. On the contrary, it seems they have something against 'capturing your attention and selling it to Fanta'. I want this piece of work to be exhibit A in how staying inside your ideological bubble will ensure failure. I think it's especially sad since they used crowdfunded money so they aren't just failing on their own dime.
- kgraves 7y ago
  > It seems like they did not consider how they want peertubers to be able to monetize. This is a valid point, the majority of [YouTube] creators want to earn money from their content, which would make PeerTube more appealing to creators big & small IMO.
- davefp 7y ago
  Here's the relevant FAQ entry for that: https://joinpeertube.org/faq#what-is-peertube-s-remuneration-policy https://joinpeertube.org/faq#what-is-peertube-s-remuneration...
  - timwaagh 7y ago
    paraphrasing: 'Getting compensated for your efforts is politically contentious, so we won't help you. But hey, we're open sourcey and stuff, so you can do it yourself. toodleydoo :) ' Look I don't really want this to fail. Would be great if streaming a video would no longer mean sending free money across the ocean. But they will have to change their attitude just a tiny bit.
- detaro 7y ago
  Most of the YouTubers I follow have ads they embed themselves in their videos, sponsored content or patreons. I'm not sure the platform running ads is actually strictly needed. (+ of course it doesn't have replace YouTube to be valuable) It'd be interesting if an instance could add them itself - I think doing it dynamically would mess with Webtorrent support?
  - 7y ago
tasogare 7y ago
The work done is awesome. I’ll try it because the idea of self-hosting low traffic videos is interesting. Besides, I can’t stand articles that use the so called écriture inclusive. Either they write in the accepted, standardized version of French or they fork it but don’t call it French.
- janus24 7y ago
  Languages evolve all the time, without the creation of a "fork" language.
- chungus_khan 7y ago
  Sprecaþ ᵹē Englisce? Language does evolve. English used to be a heavily inflected language with 5 grammatical cases and three grammatical genders, very free word order, negative concord, no do-insertion, etc. And no matter how much AF wants people in France to say "fin de semaine", they won't. A language is defined by the body speaking it, and standards bodies can really only suggest things to them.
MayeulC 7y ago
I really like the platform, but I think it would shine even more with scalable video coding support, to the point that it would be a game-changer. Unfortunately, the issue was closed [1]. Do any of you know open source libraries, or documentation on SVC for mp4, VP9 or AV1? I don't think ffmpeg supports this at all, which is a shame. [1]: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/99 https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/99
- cyborgx7 7y ago
  Seems like cool tech, but not something that your average user would notice positively.
- throwaway9x 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding From what I can tell SVC adds lower resolution streams to the H264 bitstream so that devices with weaker decoders can still decode the video. This would increase, not decrease, the bandwidth. >Do any of you know open source libraries, or documentation on SVC for mp4, VP9 or AV1 It appears to be defined as annex G in the H.264 (mpeg4 part 10) spec, so it's not available in VP9 or AV1. The status quo is to use Adaptive Bitrate, where you publish streams at different quality levels and have the client choose which stream to use to adapt to network conditions.
  - MayeulC 7y ago
    > This would increase, not decrease, the bandwidth. Not if that part of the stream isn't downloaded. It's quite easy to skip over some chunks in either HTTP (range) or bittorent. > The status quo is to use Adaptive Bitrate, where you publish streams at different quality levels and have the client choose which stream to use to adapt to network conditions. This works well if you have a good connection (uninterrupted, so that you can switch to adapt to the available bandwidth), however you cannot progressively load better and better quality content, as the low quality one will be wasted. Moreover, if the connection is interrupted, you cannot fall back to the low quality content, as you probably haven't downloaded it. However, that's just wasteful, as it would "just" be a matter of presenting data in a manner that can be better chuncked. And for adaptative bitrate to work well, you need a reliable bandwidth estimate from the start... Luckily, network infrastructure is improving everywhere. But that shouldn't be a reason to be that wasteful, especially given that a) most of Internet's bandwidth is dedicated to video b) it would lower transcoding energy costs as well c) if everyone gets the same file, it's much, much more effective for p2p, such as in that case (especially for a moderate number of viewers). Edit: > From what I can tell SVC adds lower resolution streams to the H264 bitstream so that devices with weaker decoders can still decode the video. It's more like organizing the data so that some can be dropped, and it gracefully degrades quality (FPS, resolution...) instead of dropping some images. I tried to explain it with my own terms there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17307277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17307277 before knowing the proper name. Searching HN, I found https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18045494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18045494 which kind of answers my question.
mcjiggerlog 7y ago
I really want to like peertube but I think its UX, at least where it stands now, is going to hold it back from ever challenging youtube. I use youtube a lot, and for a huge range of topics. I don't have any interest in creating an account on a niche-specific instance and I think the average user who doesn't even understand what federalization does even less. However, I literally don't even understand how to make an account on what, as far I can tell, is supposed to be the go-to instance - https://peertube.social https://peertube.social. If there's no main platform where you can watch and discover general content then there's nothing that you can point new users to. As a developer, if you want to host a niche video site, then peertube looks great. As a user, if you want to move off of youtube then I don't think this is how you're going to do that.
- Spivak 7y ago
  I think hosting a niche video site is more PT’s speed anyway. There are plenty of video makers that have an audience that would follow them them to a new platform and PT is one way to do that and (possibly) keep more of the cut that YT is currently taking now. As long as YT stays dominant they’re always going to have the advantage of availability and discovery so it’s honestly not worth competing for makers on that front.
  - jasode 7y ago
    >I think hosting a niche video site is more PT’s speed anyway. I'm not debating you but just want to highlight the 1st sentence from the article of this thread: ", we have been developing a software to free us all from YouTube & Co for a year." Whether the dev team really thinks PeerTube's architecture can replace Youtube for "all of us" instead of just niche content, I can't say.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    > keep more of the cut that YT is currently taking now. Keep more of what cut? AFAICT, YouTube creators make money from two primary sources: YouTube ads and Patreon. The latter is independent of YouTube (i.e. YouTube doesn't get a cut). The former seems very closely tied to YouTube. How would an independent creator even go about sourcing ads to show on their independent site? Do they want to put in the effort? Would they really have enough leverage to get paid substantially more than their cut of YouTube's ads?
lewisflude 7y ago
Went on https://peertube.video/ https://peertube.video/ and immediately got a bunch of porn. Not really sure from a consumer aspect this is yet fully there from a UX perspective! But the tech is really interesting and as a federated alternative I could see it doing really well. Best of luck to the team!
- seany 7y ago
  Seems like stabot ( https://gitlab.com/juergens/stabbot https://gitlab.com/juergens/stabbot ) is using that instance as some kind of intermediate store. So what ever is requested of it will get posted.
- edf13 7y ago
  Thanks for the heads up! Didn't want to click through on my open plan office - or worse with my son sat next to me!
- savingGrace 7y ago
  This was my first thought. With all of these YT alternatives I always end up asking who determines what content is saved/available? What if it doesn't go along with their beliefs or political stance? There's a fine line between going too far in each direction. e.g. China vs Pirate Bay Edit: "a system where videos require manual approval by administrators before posting them" If you're seeing a ton of porn, then clearly the sysadmin's beliefs/views don't align with mine.
  - detaro 7y ago
    And the great thing is that you then can use an instance that has a sysadmin that filters better for your needs.
- littlestymaar 7y ago
  Peertube, 5 years in: YouTube still has a monopoly on generalist video streaming, but at least pornhub and xvideos are dead.
- bogwog 7y ago
Hitton 7y ago
Do I understand it correctly, that the federation in this case means that I can watch video from site A on site B, while it's being hosted on A, meaning bandwidth cost for A and no ability to for instance suggest videos A hosts, show viewer advertisement, etc? Not sure how would I like it if I hosted instance, paid storage and bandwidth costs while noone even visits my site and views all content on site with better SEO.
- yorwba 7y ago
  Federation in this case means that you can watch videos from site A on site B, simultaneously seeding it for other users, reducing bandwidth cost for A. This only happens if site B federates with site A, meaning that it lists videos A hosts in its catalog (a mild suggestion to maybe watch them). Site A would be unable to include ads, except by baking them into the videos or descriptions etc. I'm pretty sure PeerTube isn't aiming to provide an easy way to host an ad-supported video site. They want to be an alternative to YouTube, not an exact equivalent. If you need money to produce or host videos, their current suggestion is to ask for it: https://joinpeertube.org/faq#what-is-peertube-s-remuneration-policy https://joinpeertube.org/faq#what-is-peertube-s-remuneration...
jcfrei 7y ago
I really like the idea behind these types of decentralized projects. However I want to mention that they rarely take off. And it's usually not due to some technical or marketing related reason. The simple economic reason for the lack of their success is that centralized organization like YouTube can operate much more efficiently than a decentralized one like peertube. Some of the reasons are: Higher organizational efficiency (faster restructuring due to an explicit hierarchy), which allows them to quickly adapt to a changing environment. Benefiting from economies of scale (buying specialized hardware for video hosting in bulk). Being a for-profit organization provides them with a constant feedback loop whether they still meet consumer demands. On top of that a constant source of income allows them to have paid employees. Paid employees are (all year round) more motivated to continuously adapt the platform to changing consumer demands.
- smilliken 7y ago
  You're right on all points. Still, some of the most successful systems are decentralized: internet, telephone, email, torrent, bitcoin et al, the web (caveat that DNS is centralized), etc. All of these examples are basically networks of people. Do we want these networks operated by private companies?
  - jcfrei 7y ago
    I think what you refer to as decentralized systems is for the most part applications on top of the TCP/IP protocol stack. Still I wouldn't call the examples you provided - with the exception of torrents - as decentralized. The internet and the telephone systems are mostly run by a few large ISPs and CDNs, email by a few large providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook), and for most people the web consists of Facebook, Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, etc and a few large newspaper sites.
- birracerveza 7y ago
  I just want a place (that I own) where I can store my videos, watch them and share them with people. Even if they didn't work on Peertube anymore it's already enough if they give me basic (but working) features. Not everything has to keep "improving" all the time. A big THANK YOU to those who contribute to this project.
richardARPANET 7y ago
Unfortunately, "normal people" are never going to use something like this in significant numbers. We need a centralized video hosting website, with freedom of speech values, with huge funding, which markets to normal people. The only way I see this happening is a single bored billionaire going for it.
- ddalex 7y ago
  We need centralized access for discovery, but distributed access for storage and accessing, as to spread the costs. And then we need countless people on the internet to buy, install, maintain and replace the hardware that powers all of this. That's not easy.
- M2Ys4U 7y ago
  >with freedom of speech values No thanks, I prefer to go to bars without Nazis.
00992266 7y ago
I like the idea, peer to peer and decentralized, but it seems like the UX and UI should be the biggest problem of it by now.
Communitivity 7y ago
A major differentiator for PeerTube, if they are still doing the decentralized data route, is that content publishers control their content. I am curious if that is still the case with PeerTube, but it used to be 'Mastodon for Videos'. That means a central authority can't take down videos. A site like peertube.social can only ban certain videos from being shared through its site, or ban individual users, and perhaps keep a blacklist to share with other sites. I find it interesting that the Madame Secretary episode I watched last night (from last week) dealt with the issue of deep fakes. Particularly how easy it is, if someone is willing to put in the time, to create and publish video showing someone doing/saying something they'd never do. Decentralized trust and reputation metrics are going to be a big thing over the next decade.
- xouse 7y ago
  This is one of the rare good fits for blockchain. You can get the hash of a video, or hash for each segment of a video, then store that hash in a blockchain transaction, which makes it publicly verifiable while also serving as a timestamp. A news organization could have their own wallet that they're sending currency from which acts as a verifier that it's them, then they store a hash/s of their video on the blockchain. Then you could have a facebook/twitter player that checks the hash of shared news video clips and could display a lock icon and message that says something like this video is verified non tampered from the CNN source.
ajuc 7y ago
My problem with peertube is - if I install it and federate I'll have all sorts of illegal videos on my computer. Nazi propaganda, child porn, anything. I'm not going to spend hours moderating that, and I certainly don't want to explain myself to police. And if I don't federate it's basically less convenient ftp.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- danShumway 7y ago
  > These instances can chose to follow each other (this is called federating). For example, if the head of IT services of College X would like KarateTube videos to appear on CollegeTube, all she has to do is federate with KarateTube. KarateTube’s videos will remain on its server but students who are used to watching videos from CollegeTube will be able to see them. It sounds like federation isn't an everything-or-nothing approach. You can federate with a specific instance that you trust, and even in that case, you won't host any videos on your device other than what you upload. Would like to see confirmation, but it also seems like instances can follow in one-direction. IE, I could have a private server that follows no one, but allow other instances that want to include my public videos in their search results to follow me. That assumes I understand the details correctly -- the FAQ is a tiny bit vague so maybe I'm misunderstanding.
sabujp 7y ago
elephant in the room: how does this platform deal with DMCA requests, copyright violations, and content moderation.
- piepoter 7y ago
  Website allegedly claims that it can't take down user's content because it's decentralized, would the DMCA request go through to the individual user? I can see that being a problem with negligent people, I expect that the company would probably step in regardless and take down videos.
- M2Ys4U 7y ago
  That's a little bit like asking how nginx deals with DMCA requests. It depends who's running the specific server running PeerTube.
sitzkrieg 7y ago
I setup a peertube and companion mastodon just about a year ago. I mostly used the peertube personally. A few weeks later I noticed some user was uploading movie rips so I disabled the user account in the barebones admin user interface and set a user data limit at 2 gigabytes, the server had tons of space and this seemed generous. Fast foward EOM, what appeared to be the same user created an automated system to create a new user, upload 2GB and move to the next. Peertubes basic ui had no way to mass ban, set filters, nothing. I had a monster bill and just unplugged the whole thing because the users were coming from a wide range of ips. While I hope that was an outlier, the UI still leaves a LOT to be desired, and slower instances are painful to use
- majewsky 7y ago
  I love how we spend so much time rediscovering all those hard truths that we supposedly already learned in the "Web 2.0" era. Whenever you have user-generated content, you need to deal with the quality and legality of that content. FOSS and decentralization enthusiasts still seem to be imagining the internet as a place where all people willingly cooperate to create positive value for everyone, as if trolls, pirates and conspiracy theorists weren't a thing.
Kenji 7y ago
I tried watching 5 videos on PeerTube and none of them loaded. Then I left and went back to YouTube. That's your problem right there. I don't care if you're on v2 or v99, if your videos don't load your service is worthless.
bedros 7y ago
peertube will not catch up unless someone creates an advertisement market place for PeerTube, so content creators can monetize their content outside YouTube here's a startup idea for you all. :-)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
simion314 7y ago
Some people here said that Youtube has a good recomandation algorithm, this is weird because I stil get same video recommended and auto played even if I disliked it and trying to google "how to do X on youtube" just returns youtube results for your query not web results on how to fix youtube
wbillingsley 7y ago
Have you tried talking to universities or university video providers (e.g. Echo360)? A lot of universities are part of networks (e.g., the one I teach at, UNE in Australia, is part of the Regional Universities Network.) So they seem to fit the pattern of organisations that produce and host a lot of videos (course videos), don't like YouTube (we sometimes get told off for putting course videos there) and are part of networks that might like federated access to each others' video collections (while we mostly produce our own - it's not tv it's a teaching course and students usually want to hear from their teachers - sometimes we'll want to include something like a guest talk from industry). Universities may be less interested in the bittorrent streaming aspect (they already successfully stream video and don't face the ridiculous peaks in demand because most videos aren't public) but ActivityPub to be able to search selected videos from each others' repositories could be interesting.
wingworks 7y ago
I tried to play the about PeerTube video and selected 1080p and got about a second, then spent most of the time waiting while it buffered... very slowly (100-200KB/s), whereas YouTube 1080p is near-instant. I would have thought there (probably) most popular video should be well seeded, but I only see like 2 seeds on it.
Seb-C 7y ago
So the only peer-related functionality is allowing a site to share videos with other sites? While I appreciate the project, this seems like a useless gadget to me. If we want to fix the problems of Youtube we need a service that allows creators to independently make their own video distribution website as easily as creating a Wordpress blog today. It means something that just works without technical knowledge, while the creator has 100% freedom and responsibility about what is hosted. The www is decentralized by nature, no need to reinvent crazy and complex things. We just need to be able to create a video-distribution-website as easily as a facebook page or a youtube channel.

PeerTube v2

455 points by jeremiem 7y ago

solf1re 7y ago

can anyone tdlr peertube vs lbry?

cyborgx7 7y ago
Peertube is a feration protocol for YouTube-like video hosts to interact with eachother. Or more precisely, it's an implementation of ActivityPub, like Mastodon, focused on video hosting. LBRY appears to be some kind of cryptocurrency thing. I don't know. Looks shady.
- solf1re 7y ago
  Thanks for the response, not sure why my request had been downvoted :/ I've used LBRY in the past, its decentralised video hosting as I understand it. But also allows for content producers to monetise their stuff. kauffj mentions it above - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513640

mikece 7y ago

The peer-to-peer storage and sharing of video files isn't the hard part: it's the ability to search for and discover content that makes YouTube compelling in my opinion. Are any of these p2p YouTube replacements presenting a compelling way to search/discover content in a distributed way? Or if the search index is centralized, do any of them have a compelling model for staying funded without selling everyone's search/catalog information to data brokers?

kauffj 7y ago
You could look at LBRY (https://lbry.tech https://lbry.tech https://lbry.com https://lbry.com https://beta.lbry.tv https://beta.lbry.tv). LBRY is similar to PeerTube in open and decentralization, but all content metadata is written to a blockchain, which means everyone/anyone can access the index. This blockchain can then be searched (https://github.com/lbryio/lighthouse https://github.com/lbryio/lighthouse) or extracted to SQL (https://github.com/lbryio/chainquery https://github.com/lbryio/chainquery).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- olah_1 7y ago
  Sadly, LBRY isn't able to track view counts. Which makes organic, network effects really difficult. Maybe they could implement a naive "view tracking" by having the client do small proof of work when they interact with content? Similar to voting in NotaBug? https://github.com/notabugio/notabug https://github.com/notabugio/notabug
jasode 7y ago
> Are any of these p2p YouTube replacements presenting a compelling way to search/discover content in a distributed way? Being "distributed" over p2p/federated architecture opposes the end-user convenience of search/discovery/ranking/recommendations because of speed-of-light limitations. I wrote a previous comment about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17578332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17578332 Also, the previous last reply by posting2fast of a partial-centralized server doesn't really replace Youtube because his proposed idea creates new problems of spam videos and untrusted/fake videos. E.g. the central index of metadata says "www.johndoehomeserver.com" has a tutorial video for Algebra but when you actually stream the video from "johndoehomeserver.com", you get a spam video for Viagra instead of math instruction. Therefore, users will naturally gravitate toward the centralized servers that have both the metadata and the actual video content. This emergent group behavior of preferences would end up recreating another "Youtube"-like clone. p2p architecture and torrents works well for things like pirated Photoshop or ripped Marvel Avengers movies because the users already have the content's title _preloaded_ in their brain and therefore a centralized index for discovery/serendipity of unknown content isn't necessary.
- deleted 7y ago
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- tiborsaas 7y ago
  It does not necessarily oppose it. All there needs to be done is to expose a static, daily generated JSON file that contains all videos on the instance. This has nothing to do with the speed of light. Anyone then could build a search index and build a good search experience. To combat spam, instances should reveal up/downvotes to indicate quality, I guess your fake math video would not get much love from the community.
  - jasode 7y ago
    >This has nothing to do with the speed of light. Please take extra care to correctly parse what I actually wrote in response to the gp. Yes, speed-of-light is still a limitation based on the gp's constraint of "search/discovery in a _distributed_ way" which means the search algorithm avoids central servers and loops through a bunch of remote p2p nodes to parse a bunch of exposed JSON manifest files. If instead, the search algorithm loops through data in a cached index server, that's no longer "search in a distributed way" that the gp was originally wondering about. That's the particular point I was responding to. >Anyone then could build a search index and build a good search experience. Now, as to the issue with that "cache index server" that pre-parses the JSON files... The cache server that also contains the actual video data will naturally attract the most users because when they hit the "play" button on their smartphone, the video starts immediately instead of waiting or suffering stuttering from somebody's flakey home video server. So, the index server with the "good experience" as perceived by users will be the one that also includes the actual videos -- basically acts as a CDN -- and this emergent behavior of user preferences defeats the decentralized ideals of p2p video. We see that p2p of things like illegal software already works and is proven. However, p2p of mainstream videos has massive technical hurdles that oppose how typical users like to discover content and play them with immediate gratification.
dmos62 7y ago
Well that's the real problem when you start competing with Google and the like. They're data behemoths. As long as you don't have as much data collected, they'll have a significant advantage. The solution to this is really simple and hardly conceivable at the same time: make competitively important data public. In this case, that's anonymized video browsing/viewing data. Market competition would flourish, the big guys would lose the monopoly.
- pault 7y ago
  But then who will be incentivized to gather the data?
  - dmos62 7y ago
    Anyone who needs more, I guess? Or, is the premise that gathering data is resource intensive (like innovation and patents for example)? These aren't big problems, I think. The problem is that the people who hold the monopolies on data at the moment are also the people who are extremely powerful lobyists.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  >In this case, that's anonymized video browsing/viewing data So the view count publicly available and something like the Google search analytics already available? Personalized data offers a huge competitive advantage.
  - dmos62 7y ago
    Personalized (as in per user) and anonymized are not mutually exclusive.
    - boomboomsubban 7y ago
      Sure, but non-anonymized personalized data still provides a competitive advantage.
arkh 7y ago
> discover content Discover heavily sponsored content from content farms. As an experiment, even with an old account, start just browsing the content Youtube highlights. You will soon end with a recommendation page full of shit with 500K+ views using the same template.
- glennpratt 7y ago
  I don't understand your point; garbage in, garbage out. I have a very old account and browse suggestions using my brain, not randomly. While not perfect, almost every recommendation right now looks like something I could watch. Bicycling, civil engineering, cat toys, and weird metal music mashups, which are all similar to things I intentionally watched, but haven't watched.
velcrovan 7y ago
> Are any of these p2p YouTube replacements presenting a compelling way to search/discover content in a distributed way? Ideally we’d see blogs return as the curated content mediators.

sschueller 7y ago

I love this project and that is sets the focus on providing a video platform as its primary goal ignoring implementing monetizaion like crypto tokens etc. for now. Many thanks to all the people who worked hard on getting PeerTube to what it is today.

kgraves 7y ago

Great work! This is a good YouTube alternative I can get behind, however after reading a little bit I kind of frowned at this line on the plugin paragraph. > You could also imagine plug-ins to sort videos in reverse alphabetical order, or to add a Tipee, Paypal or Patreon button below videos! Please don't consider or be tempted by those three proprietary platforms, I would much rather prefer donating using Liberapay instead. Other than this, PeerTube has got huge potential and I would love to know what content creators (on YT or HN) think of it.

celticninja 7y ago
Perhaps reach out and let them know about it
csunbird 7y ago
I think you can add any plugin you want, which can include all kinds of payment buttons.
vanous 7y ago
Unfortunately, there is no alternative. Everybody uses PayPal or Stripe on the backend...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- krageon 7y ago
  > Everybody uses PayPal or Stripe Are you implying that there are literally no other payment platforms than ones that reduce to PayPal or Stripe?
  - vanous 7y ago
    Unfortunately yes. Look at Librepay's "How it works for creators" paragraph: "We currently support processing payments through Stripe and PayPal."
Deukhoofd 7y ago

m12k 7y ago

Does anyone know of a successful server-based peer-to-peer project other than TOR and cryptocurrencies? I'm all for breaking free of the stranglehold of centralized proprietary platforms, but it also seems to me that most of the open source projects that ever really succeed at competing against entrenched proprietary incombents are the ones where a centralized service is being provided by a non-profit (e.g. Wikimedia Foundation, Mozilla, Canonical). Maybe expecting people to set up a server is just a bridge too far? Maybe there's just too many conveniences in centralization for todays users to put up with the hassle? Maybe there needs to be a centralized server that is as easy to use as the proprietary ones, and then the hardcore users can set up their own and federate with the central one?

cyborgx7 7y ago
E-Mail
- m12k 7y ago
  Right, and web servers too - neither had much competition when it launched though, so the point about no being able to beat incumbent proprietary solutions still stands. Not to mention the majority of people get their email hosted by a proprietary service these days.
  - cyborgx7 7y ago
    >neither had much competition when it launched though I'm sceptikal as well, about a federated protocol being able to replace an existing entrenched player. Buy I still hope. >Not to mention the majority of people get their email hosted by a proprietary service these days. But all the proprietary services talk to eachother, and, mostly, talk to private instances as well. There are absolutely allowed to be proprietary PeerTube instances.
- stereolambda 7y ago
  This is interesting as when the subject of setting up your own server comes up, people always complain how much of a hassle it is to maintain sender reputation with Gmail and Outlook. This leads me to two thoughts/questions: 1. Maybe successful decentralization schemes should be made providing for some peers that will be private for-profit? I know that (for example) IPFS encourages building services. 2. What could we do to ensure that small private peers will continue to be viable, even if some large for-profit peers will dominate? Of course such measures should be reasonably resistant to being used by bad spammy/illegal actors etc. ("Bad actors being bad" is always a handy rhetoric for overcentralization, but the problem itself should be obviously addressed.)

gillesjacobs 7y ago

In the space of distributed video platforms, I think Peertube has the right idea: Bitchute is gaining a lot of traction, but the core issue of centralized control remains. Distributed content delivery is not enough to prevent censorship and viewer manipulation. Federation will allow many platforms to proliferate and solves this problem. I hope Peertube gains traction, but they're fighting an uphill battle when it comes to the centralized competition. The problem that PeerTube cannot solve is engagement and stability: - Engagement: Unlike Youtube they cannot use a recommender system like for suggestions. Most Youtube views are from recommendations and related videos. - Stability: As a business or media outlet, I will link to a Youtube video but not a PeerTube video because I know Youtube will host it indefinitely.

kaffeemitsahne 7y ago
>- Engagement: Unlike Youtube they cannot use a recommender system like for suggestions. Most Youtube views are from recommendations and related videos I won't be missing yt's recommendations at all. If peertube can implement related videos only based on the current video and nothing else, that would be great though.
JoshuaDavid 7y ago
I wonder if a decentralized recommendation system is really impossible though. If it's possible to get a user to rate and classify a few videos along some dimensions, and made those classifications public, it might be possible to find other users who similarly classified those videos and recommend videos based on the ratings of those similar users. This would mitigate many attempts at censorship, though it probably worsens echo chamber issues. Also, a new platform doesn't have to solve every problem with the old one to be an improvement. Decentralized content delivery with a centralized recommendation engine might still be enough to compete if centralized content delivery platforms screw up badly enough.
yorwba 7y ago
> Stability: As a business or media outlet, I will link to a Youtube video but not a PeerTube video because I know Youtube will host it indefinitely. If you want the video to stay up indefinitely (or at least as long as your company continues operating) you should probably host it yourself (e.g. on your own PeerTube instance), because YouTube might take it down whenever they feel like it.

tiborsaas 7y ago

Is there a search engine to look for content across all instances?

timwaagh 7y ago

It seems like they did not consider how they want peertubers to be able to monetize. On the contrary, it seems they have something against 'capturing your attention and selling it to Fanta'. I want this piece of work to be exhibit A in how staying inside your ideological bubble will ensure failure. I think it's especially sad since they used crowdfunded money so they aren't just failing on their own dime.

kgraves 7y ago
> It seems like they did not consider how they want peertubers to be able to monetize. This is a valid point, the majority of [YouTube] creators want to earn money from their content, which would make PeerTube more appealing to creators big & small IMO.
davefp 7y ago
Here's the relevant FAQ entry for that: https://joinpeertube.org/faq#what-is-peertube-s-remuneration-policy https://joinpeertube.org/faq#what-is-peertube-s-remuneration...
- timwaagh 7y ago
  paraphrasing: 'Getting compensated for your efforts is politically contentious, so we won't help you. But hey, we're open sourcey and stuff, so you can do it yourself. toodleydoo :) ' Look I don't really want this to fail. Would be great if streaming a video would no longer mean sending free money across the ocean. But they will have to change their attitude just a tiny bit.
detaro 7y ago
Most of the YouTubers I follow have ads they embed themselves in their videos, sponsored content or patreons. I'm not sure the platform running ads is actually strictly needed. (+ of course it doesn't have replace YouTube to be valuable) It'd be interesting if an instance could add them itself - I think doing it dynamically would mess with Webtorrent support?
- 7y ago

tasogare 7y ago

The work done is awesome. I’ll try it because the idea of self-hosting low traffic videos is interesting. Besides, I can’t stand articles that use the so called écriture inclusive. Either they write in the accepted, standardized version of French or they fork it but don’t call it French.

janus24 7y ago
Languages evolve all the time, without the creation of a "fork" language.
chungus_khan 7y ago
Sprecaþ ᵹē Englisce? Language does evolve. English used to be a heavily inflected language with 5 grammatical cases and three grammatical genders, very free word order, negative concord, no do-insertion, etc. And no matter how much AF wants people in France to say "fin de semaine", they won't. A language is defined by the body speaking it, and standards bodies can really only suggest things to them.

MayeulC 7y ago

I really like the platform, but I think it would shine even more with scalable video coding support, to the point that it would be a game-changer. Unfortunately, the issue was closed [1]. Do any of you know open source libraries, or documentation on SVC for mp4, VP9 or AV1? I don't think ffmpeg supports this at all, which is a shame. [1]: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/99 https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/99

cyborgx7 7y ago
Seems like cool tech, but not something that your average user would notice positively.
throwaway9x 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding From what I can tell SVC adds lower resolution streams to the H264 bitstream so that devices with weaker decoders can still decode the video. This would increase, not decrease, the bandwidth. >Do any of you know open source libraries, or documentation on SVC for mp4, VP9 or AV1 It appears to be defined as annex G in the H.264 (mpeg4 part 10) spec, so it's not available in VP9 or AV1. The status quo is to use Adaptive Bitrate, where you publish streams at different quality levels and have the client choose which stream to use to adapt to network conditions.
- MayeulC 7y ago
  > This would increase, not decrease, the bandwidth. Not if that part of the stream isn't downloaded. It's quite easy to skip over some chunks in either HTTP (range) or bittorent. > The status quo is to use Adaptive Bitrate, where you publish streams at different quality levels and have the client choose which stream to use to adapt to network conditions. This works well if you have a good connection (uninterrupted, so that you can switch to adapt to the available bandwidth), however you cannot progressively load better and better quality content, as the low quality one will be wasted. Moreover, if the connection is interrupted, you cannot fall back to the low quality content, as you probably haven't downloaded it. However, that's just wasteful, as it would "just" be a matter of presenting data in a manner that can be better chuncked. And for adaptative bitrate to work well, you need a reliable bandwidth estimate from the start... Luckily, network infrastructure is improving everywhere. But that shouldn't be a reason to be that wasteful, especially given that a) most of Internet's bandwidth is dedicated to video b) it would lower transcoding energy costs as well c) if everyone gets the same file, it's much, much more effective for p2p, such as in that case (especially for a moderate number of viewers). Edit: > From what I can tell SVC adds lower resolution streams to the H264 bitstream so that devices with weaker decoders can still decode the video. It's more like organizing the data so that some can be dropped, and it gracefully degrades quality (FPS, resolution...) instead of dropping some images. I tried to explain it with my own terms there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17307277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17307277 before knowing the proper name. Searching HN, I found https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18045494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18045494 which kind of answers my question.

mcjiggerlog 7y ago

I really want to like peertube but I think its UX, at least where it stands now, is going to hold it back from ever challenging youtube. I use youtube a lot, and for a huge range of topics. I don't have any interest in creating an account on a niche-specific instance and I think the average user who doesn't even understand what federalization does even less. However, I literally don't even understand how to make an account on what, as far I can tell, is supposed to be the go-to instance - https://peertube.social https://peertube.social. If there's no main platform where you can watch and discover general content then there's nothing that you can point new users to. As a developer, if you want to host a niche video site, then peertube looks great. As a user, if you want to move off of youtube then I don't think this is how you're going to do that.

Spivak 7y ago
I think hosting a niche video site is more PT’s speed anyway. There are plenty of video makers that have an audience that would follow them them to a new platform and PT is one way to do that and (possibly) keep more of the cut that YT is currently taking now. As long as YT stays dominant they’re always going to have the advantage of availability and discovery so it’s honestly not worth competing for makers on that front.
- jasode 7y ago
  >I think hosting a niche video site is more PT’s speed anyway. I'm not debating you but just want to highlight the 1st sentence from the article of this thread: ", we have been developing a software to free us all from YouTube & Co for a year." Whether the dev team really thinks PeerTube's architecture can replace Youtube for "all of us" instead of just niche content, I can't say.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  > keep more of the cut that YT is currently taking now. Keep more of what cut? AFAICT, YouTube creators make money from two primary sources: YouTube ads and Patreon. The latter is independent of YouTube (i.e. YouTube doesn't get a cut). The former seems very closely tied to YouTube. How would an independent creator even go about sourcing ads to show on their independent site? Do they want to put in the effort? Would they really have enough leverage to get paid substantially more than their cut of YouTube's ads?

lewisflude 7y ago

Went on https://peertube.video/ https://peertube.video/ and immediately got a bunch of porn. Not really sure from a consumer aspect this is yet fully there from a UX perspective! But the tech is really interesting and as a federated alternative I could see it doing really well. Best of luck to the team!

seany 7y ago
Seems like stabot ( https://gitlab.com/juergens/stabbot https://gitlab.com/juergens/stabbot ) is using that instance as some kind of intermediate store. So what ever is requested of it will get posted.
edf13 7y ago
Thanks for the heads up! Didn't want to click through on my open plan office - or worse with my son sat next to me!
savingGrace 7y ago
This was my first thought. With all of these YT alternatives I always end up asking who determines what content is saved/available? What if it doesn't go along with their beliefs or political stance? There's a fine line between going too far in each direction. e.g. China vs Pirate Bay Edit: "a system where videos require manual approval by administrators before posting them" If you're seeing a ton of porn, then clearly the sysadmin's beliefs/views don't align with mine.
- detaro 7y ago
  And the great thing is that you then can use an instance that has a sysadmin that filters better for your needs.
littlestymaar 7y ago
Peertube, 5 years in: YouTube still has a monopoly on generalist video streaming, but at least pornhub and xvideos are dead.
bogwog 7y ago

Hitton 7y ago

Do I understand it correctly, that the federation in this case means that I can watch video from site A on site B, while it's being hosted on A, meaning bandwidth cost for A and no ability to for instance suggest videos A hosts, show viewer advertisement, etc? Not sure how would I like it if I hosted instance, paid storage and bandwidth costs while noone even visits my site and views all content on site with better SEO.

yorwba 7y ago
Federation in this case means that you can watch videos from site A on site B, simultaneously seeding it for other users, reducing bandwidth cost for A. This only happens if site B federates with site A, meaning that it lists videos A hosts in its catalog (a mild suggestion to maybe watch them). Site A would be unable to include ads, except by baking them into the videos or descriptions etc. I'm pretty sure PeerTube isn't aiming to provide an easy way to host an ad-supported video site. They want to be an alternative to YouTube, not an exact equivalent. If you need money to produce or host videos, their current suggestion is to ask for it: https://joinpeertube.org/faq#what-is-peertube-s-remuneration-policy https://joinpeertube.org/faq#what-is-peertube-s-remuneration...

jcfrei 7y ago

I really like the idea behind these types of decentralized projects. However I want to mention that they rarely take off. And it's usually not due to some technical or marketing related reason. The simple economic reason for the lack of their success is that centralized organization like YouTube can operate much more efficiently than a decentralized one like peertube. Some of the reasons are: Higher organizational efficiency (faster restructuring due to an explicit hierarchy), which allows them to quickly adapt to a changing environment. Benefiting from economies of scale (buying specialized hardware for video hosting in bulk). Being a for-profit organization provides them with a constant feedback loop whether they still meet consumer demands. On top of that a constant source of income allows them to have paid employees. Paid employees are (all year round) more motivated to continuously adapt the platform to changing consumer demands.

smilliken 7y ago
You're right on all points. Still, some of the most successful systems are decentralized: internet, telephone, email, torrent, bitcoin et al, the web (caveat that DNS is centralized), etc. All of these examples are basically networks of people. Do we want these networks operated by private companies?
- jcfrei 7y ago
  I think what you refer to as decentralized systems is for the most part applications on top of the TCP/IP protocol stack. Still I wouldn't call the examples you provided - with the exception of torrents - as decentralized. The internet and the telephone systems are mostly run by a few large ISPs and CDNs, email by a few large providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook), and for most people the web consists of Facebook, Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, etc and a few large newspaper sites.
birracerveza 7y ago
I just want a place (that I own) where I can store my videos, watch them and share them with people. Even if they didn't work on Peertube anymore it's already enough if they give me basic (but working) features. Not everything has to keep "improving" all the time. A big THANK YOU to those who contribute to this project.

richardARPANET 7y ago

Unfortunately, "normal people" are never going to use something like this in significant numbers. We need a centralized video hosting website, with freedom of speech values, with huge funding, which markets to normal people. The only way I see this happening is a single bored billionaire going for it.

ddalex 7y ago
We need centralized access for discovery, but distributed access for storage and accessing, as to spread the costs. And then we need countless people on the internet to buy, install, maintain and replace the hardware that powers all of this. That's not easy.
M2Ys4U 7y ago
>with freedom of speech values No thanks, I prefer to go to bars without Nazis.

00992266 7y ago

I like the idea, peer to peer and decentralized, but it seems like the UX and UI should be the biggest problem of it by now.

Communitivity 7y ago

A major differentiator for PeerTube, if they are still doing the decentralized data route, is that content publishers control their content. I am curious if that is still the case with PeerTube, but it used to be 'Mastodon for Videos'. That means a central authority can't take down videos. A site like peertube.social can only ban certain videos from being shared through its site, or ban individual users, and perhaps keep a blacklist to share with other sites. I find it interesting that the Madame Secretary episode I watched last night (from last week) dealt with the issue of deep fakes. Particularly how easy it is, if someone is willing to put in the time, to create and publish video showing someone doing/saying something they'd never do. Decentralized trust and reputation metrics are going to be a big thing over the next decade.

xouse 7y ago
This is one of the rare good fits for blockchain. You can get the hash of a video, or hash for each segment of a video, then store that hash in a blockchain transaction, which makes it publicly verifiable while also serving as a timestamp. A news organization could have their own wallet that they're sending currency from which acts as a verifier that it's them, then they store a hash/s of their video on the blockchain. Then you could have a facebook/twitter player that checks the hash of shared news video clips and could display a lock icon and message that says something like this video is verified non tampered from the CNN source.

ajuc 7y ago

My problem with peertube is - if I install it and federate I'll have all sorts of illegal videos on my computer. Nazi propaganda, child porn, anything. I'm not going to spend hours moderating that, and I certainly don't want to explain myself to police. And if I don't federate it's basically less convenient ftp.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
danShumway 7y ago
> These instances can chose to follow each other (this is called federating). For example, if the head of IT services of College X would like KarateTube videos to appear on CollegeTube, all she has to do is federate with KarateTube. KarateTube’s videos will remain on its server but students who are used to watching videos from CollegeTube will be able to see them. It sounds like federation isn't an everything-or-nothing approach. You can federate with a specific instance that you trust, and even in that case, you won't host any videos on your device other than what you upload. Would like to see confirmation, but it also seems like instances can follow in one-direction. IE, I could have a private server that follows no one, but allow other instances that want to include my public videos in their search results to follow me. That assumes I understand the details correctly -- the FAQ is a tiny bit vague so maybe I'm misunderstanding.

sabujp 7y ago

elephant in the room: how does this platform deal with DMCA requests, copyright violations, and content moderation.

piepoter 7y ago
Website allegedly claims that it can't take down user's content because it's decentralized, would the DMCA request go through to the individual user? I can see that being a problem with negligent people, I expect that the company would probably step in regardless and take down videos.
M2Ys4U 7y ago
That's a little bit like asking how nginx deals with DMCA requests. It depends who's running the specific server running PeerTube.

sitzkrieg 7y ago

I setup a peertube and companion mastodon just about a year ago. I mostly used the peertube personally. A few weeks later I noticed some user was uploading movie rips so I disabled the user account in the barebones admin user interface and set a user data limit at 2 gigabytes, the server had tons of space and this seemed generous. Fast foward EOM, what appeared to be the same user created an automated system to create a new user, upload 2GB and move to the next. Peertubes basic ui had no way to mass ban, set filters, nothing. I had a monster bill and just unplugged the whole thing because the users were coming from a wide range of ips. While I hope that was an outlier, the UI still leaves a LOT to be desired, and slower instances are painful to use

majewsky 7y ago
I love how we spend so much time rediscovering all those hard truths that we supposedly already learned in the "Web 2.0" era. Whenever you have user-generated content, you need to deal with the quality and legality of that content. FOSS and decentralization enthusiasts still seem to be imagining the internet as a place where all people willingly cooperate to create positive value for everyone, as if trolls, pirates and conspiracy theorists weren't a thing.

Kenji 7y ago

I tried watching 5 videos on PeerTube and none of them loaded. Then I left and went back to YouTube. That's your problem right there. I don't care if you're on v2 or v99, if your videos don't load your service is worthless.

bedros 7y ago

peertube will not catch up unless someone creates an advertisement market place for PeerTube, so content creators can monetize their content outside YouTube here's a startup idea for you all. :-)

deleted 7y ago
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simion314 7y ago

Some people here said that Youtube has a good recomandation algorithm, this is weird because I stil get same video recommended and auto played even if I disliked it and trying to google "how to do X on youtube" just returns youtube results for your query not web results on how to fix youtube

wbillingsley 7y ago

Have you tried talking to universities or university video providers (e.g. Echo360)? A lot of universities are part of networks (e.g., the one I teach at, UNE in Australia, is part of the Regional Universities Network.) So they seem to fit the pattern of organisations that produce and host a lot of videos (course videos), don't like YouTube (we sometimes get told off for putting course videos there) and are part of networks that might like federated access to each others' video collections (while we mostly produce our own - it's not tv it's a teaching course and students usually want to hear from their teachers - sometimes we'll want to include something like a guest talk from industry). Universities may be less interested in the bittorrent streaming aspect (they already successfully stream video and don't face the ridiculous peaks in demand because most videos aren't public) but ActivityPub to be able to search selected videos from each others' repositories could be interesting.

wingworks 7y ago

I tried to play the about PeerTube video and selected 1080p and got about a second, then spent most of the time waiting while it buffered... very slowly (100-200KB/s), whereas YouTube 1080p is near-instant. I would have thought there (probably) most popular video should be well seeded, but I only see like 2 seeds on it.

Seb-C 7y ago

So the only peer-related functionality is allowing a site to share videos with other sites? While I appreciate the project, this seems like a useless gadget to me. If we want to fix the problems of Youtube we need a service that allows creators to independently make their own video distribution website as easily as creating a Wordpress blog today. It means something that just works without technical knowledge, while the creator has 100% freedom and responsibility about what is hosted. The www is decentralized by nature, no need to reinvent crazy and complex things. We just need to be able to create a video-distribution-website as easily as a facebook page or a youtube channel.