23 ms·

Bye YouTube, Hello PeerTube [video]

442 points by x14km2d 5y ago

aledalgrande 5y ago
lol buffering on a 100Mb
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Considering it's being hit by Hacker News, I'd say that's not that bad.
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    If it's peer to peer, shouldn't more viewers be better?
    - Popegaf 5y ago
      It depends on the configuration of the server. Some disable Webtorrent (probably because it doesn't support HLS). When they do that then I think it pulls from the federation, which then depends on how many have mirrored it.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        I didn't know it pulled from the federation at all! That's interesting.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    It's always been like that for me. Even the lowest quality videos struggle to play.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      What region are you in, and what instances are you failing to access? Smaller/newer instances generally don't have a lot of "peer instances" seeding their content, so that could be why you're having trouble accessing it. Not everyone has Youtube-level bandwidth, but even Youtube is very hard to access in many parts of the world. Peertube is designed in a decentralized manner so that people who enjoy your content can setup a local instance in their neighborhood to mirror (seed) your content.
- mattl 5y ago
  Poor to poor
petermcneeley 5y ago
Why is the upload bytes always zero for me? (I would guess they dont do NAT holepunch)
- 3gg 5y ago
  I was wondering the same thing. Looks like the videos are shared using WebRTC, which I have disabled in my browser.
  - Popegaf 5y ago
    WebTorrent (https://webtorrent.io/ https://webtorrent.io/) is built upon WebRTC, but I believe PeerTube should fallback to simple HTTP mp4. There is a download link handy that you can open in the browser, vlc, mpv or your favorite video player. https://diode.zone/download/streaming-playlists/hls/videos/b5565a0a-7abb-45a7-86d9-0954852683be-1080-fragmented.mp4 https://diode.zone/download/streaming-playlists/hls/videos/b...
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      Video playback fallbacks to MP4 over HTTP(S). However this does not work for seeding. Grandparent comment was about why upload count is zero.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  It appears for the moment Peertube uses hardcoded STUN servers for WebRTC peer discovery. [0] It may be that your browser is blocking those 3rd party requests for privacy reasons. [0] https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/3177 https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/3177
fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
One thing I really dislike about Fediverse services is that their landing pages are always about joining/signing up. For Twitter-like applications this might be ok. But for something like YouTube, I definitely want to browse the content a bit before signing up.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  > One thing I really dislike about Fediverse services is that their landing pages are always about joining/signing up. That's because their “landing pages” (project advertisement websites) aren't instances. The home page of any instance (e.g. https://diode.zone/ https://diode.zone/) will show you the content visible from that instance.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
    This isn’t true of Mastodon or Pixelfed instances (or wasn’t when I tried running one). But, if you’re going to be called “join peertube” you need to have the sort of content that makes people want to join: copy about what peertube is + a list of instances isn’t that.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Most Mastodon instances have it a single click away from the sign-up page. (But yes, I agree. Mastodon isn't great, even though it's popular.)
      - FalconSensei 5y ago
        For many people 1 click (or even an entire screen scroll-down) is too much. If PeerTube is supposed to be an YouTube alternative, you need to see videos and a search right away. I know it's not an instance and blah-blah-blah, but those are technical details that (possible) users don't give a single F.
        lokedhs 5y ago
chairhairair 5y ago
The channel in this post has 20 YouTube subscribers and no more than a couple thousand total YouTube views. The trending page on PeerTube shows a list of videos with at most a few dozen views. Is PeerTube supremely unpopular (seems to have been launched several years ago: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube), or am I missing something? Does it really have an order of magnitude more Github stars (https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube) than daily viewers?
- freshthought 5y ago
  Perhaps the most notable fact is how upvoted this article is. Shows you how much people want to believe, maybe?
- mraudiobook_com 5y ago
  Yes. Amazingly very few seemsl to care about decentralizing the web and monitary systems. Arguably the most important invention since the internet itself ALL the big companies have huge incentive to kill the movement because they can't make money off it.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  > The channel in this post has 20 YouTube subscribers and no more than a couple thousand total YouTube views. ...that's quite a lot even on YouTube, no? I always assumed the videos recommended for their sheer popularity were a "top 1%" sort of situation.
  - spiderice 5y ago
    No, this is nowhere near a lot, even for small channels. Make a quality video about something useful and there is a good chance you get more views than this persons whole channel
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Well, if you're comparing against all YouTube users, or even all YouTube users who have ever uploaded a video, then yes, it's a lot. On the other hand, compared to most content being viewed on YouTube, it's not even tiny, it's minuscule. There are many niche hobbyist communities or individual hobbyist singers getting much more than that. 20 subscribers basically means that not even your friends and family are looking at your channel.
paulirish 5y ago
The submission links to 4:19 into the video, probably unintentionally? Sadly peertube seems to have to buffer from the beginning to play from this position.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > Sadly peertube seems to have to buffer from the beginning to play from this position. That's weird. What browser are you running? Is it downloading video directly from the server or is it doing WebRTC P2P download? The former (direct download) is intended as fallback mode and i believe it uses HLS chunking which may or may not be well supported by your browser.
jstx1 5y ago
I was wondering who they were and why they were self-saboting. Then I saw that it's a channel with 20 subscribers on youtube with view numbers in the single digits for some videos. So somebody went from not being watched on youtube, to not being watched on peertube. How did this even make it to the front page?
- uuddlrlr 5y ago
  Peertube is interesting tech, and YouTube's de facto monopoly on video hosting is less than ideal. Especially considering that it's owned by the world's largest attention harvesting operation.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - legitster 5y ago
    > de facto monopoly on video hosting How do people believe this is even remotely true? I have so many options to host videos, least of which is just housing itself on my own damn server! I don't know if the complaint here is that no one else will do it for me for free, or that no one else will just hand me viewers for free.
    - sircastor 5y ago
      It’s not literally just hosting. That’s not that hard. It’s distribution, discovery, promotion, accessibility. Right now, if you want your video to be seen, you need to be on YouTube.
    - MrGilbert 5y ago
      > I don't know if the complaint here is that no one else will do it for me for free, or that no one else will just hand me viewers for free. Devil's advocate: Which paid video-website with community created content the size similar to Youtube may I join? That's where the "de-facto" monopoly claim comes from, I guess.
    - 5y ago
tinyhouse 5y ago
"exploited by ads". Well, YouTube needs to make money somehow. If you don't want ads you can pay a monthly fee like Netflix.
- LightG 5y ago
  True, but as a typical user, I wish they'd just be straight up about it. Basically, it's user experience degradation until you're forced to sign up. How about trying to just reach out and offer a service without killing my current experience? I pay for other subscriptions so this isn't a money thing, but I won't for youtube on principle. They ruined that platform.
- carlhjerpe 5y ago
  They're probably still tracking me even though I pay right?
  - hortense 5y ago
    You can turn your history off if you want, but then you'll get suggestions of videos you've already watched.
    - carlhjerpe 5y ago
      I've noticed and turned it back on tbh, but does it actually mean they're not tracking me? They're already tracking me all over the web
      - southerntofu 5y ago
        It certainly doesn't mean they're not tracking you. It just means you opt-out of the little advantages you had from the tracking. That is, if you consider personalized recommendations to be an advantage.
- 3gg 5y ago
  Youtube forcing a subscription on everybody would be self-sabotage. Their existence and ability to make profits rests entirely on ads. And while the ads could be more ethical, they choose instead to track people in every possible way, exploiting their identity and fingerprint on the platform -- and outside the platform -- for maximum profit. So the ads are not a choice, but the soul of the product. Peertube, instead, does not exist to make profits. So yes, exploited by ads.
prvc 5y ago
Does distributed hosting really work for streaming video, especially along "the long tail"?
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Following a quick search I assume you're referring to popularity of niche content? [0] Peertube should fare just fine with that. It's just important that instance operators consider the broader implications of running an instance: - you should find an organizational/financial model to still be around in a decade - you should find like-minded instance operators to seed one another's content across continents, to ease reachability If those two aspects are taken care of, "long tail" delivery should really not be a problem for Peertube. [0] https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/ https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/
test542 5y ago
If you want PeerTube to become popular, make it easier for people to upload videos. At the moment it's too confusing and complicated; no content creator cares what "instance" means and they never will. No one who creates an account and finds that "uploads are not allowed on this instance" or encounters some similar problem is going to waste any more time trying to use it. If you leave it the way it is now, it's always just gonna be by nerds for nerds. And more people are going to be enslaved by Big Brother who controls YouTube. So please make it accessible to normal people.
- amelius 5y ago
  See also why PGP failed.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Peertube was born from a french non-profit (Framasoft) as part of their "Degooglizing internet" campaign. It's intended to be deployed to empower existing communities to share videos, rather than as a generic video upload service. It's just like you create a blog: you need to find a host for it and most websites don't allow you to just start uploading content. A growing number of non-profits are starting to embrace it and for that usecase Peertube is perfect. If there's no peertube instance for your community/usecase, you could start one with a few friends/neighbors.
dartharva 5y ago
Odysee is functionally a much better Youtube alternative than Peertube. Too bad it mostly acts like the Youtube equivalent of Parler now.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  As someone who has never used Odysee, how is it better? I'm sure Peertube project contributors would be happy to receive constructive feedback on how to improve their project.
  - dartharva 5y ago
    As an end-user, the noticeable difference for me is that when you play a video on Odysee, it plays, unlike Peertube videos.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      Can you reproduce this issue with other peertube instances? Also, what region are you from, and where is the failing instance located? Distributing videos requires good connectivity so it's not a surprise a smaller instance which is not seeded by other instances elsewhere have a hard time serving you. See also: https://docs.joinpeertube.org/admin-following-instances?id=instances-redundancy https://docs.joinpeertube.org/admin-following-instances?id=i...
varispeed 5y ago
When using such federated platforms, do you leak your IP address to other people viewing the content?
- Popegaf 5y ago
  If WebRTC is activated in your browser and webtorrent (https://webtorrent.io/ https://webtorrent.io/) is being used by the instance, yes. However, you could say the same for Zoom or most video calling platform, if I'm not mistaken.
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    Most video calling platforms only expose you to the actual people you are calling which is generally a non issue. Torrents have a public list of all content and all hosts with what content they hold. This is required for peer discovery and it means that a malicious party can just suck up the whole DHT and create a database of every video each IP address watched.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  Yes, It currently displays the following warning: > Friendly Reminder: the sharing system used for this video implies that some technical information about your system (such as a public IP address) can be sent to other peers. GitHub issue upon which this banner was decided upon[1] [1] https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/316 https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/316
- southerntofu 5y ago
  For Peertube specifically yes, if you're seeding it (opt-out if your browser supports it). However, this concern is mitigated because Peertube uses open standards, so it's very easy to use various proxying services for privacy concerns. It's unlikely that any such 3rd party clients will ever get blocked. Comparing to Youtube: a single malevolent company tracks everyone's actions for nefarious purposes, purposefully changes internal "protocol" regularly to break 3rd party clients (youtube-dl, Newpipe) and blocks scrapers and other archival systems. Overall, Peertube has much more privacy-friendly capabilities than Youtube ever will have.
mattl 5y ago
There’s no peertube app for my devices —- I’m not going to watch YouTube on my computer
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Why do you need an app? All it takes is a webbrowser. Also if you're on Android, i believe Newpipe (FLOSS) supports Peertube sources.
  - wiether 5y ago
    Sure, I definitely want to use a web-browser on my TV with a remote control. On mobile I'm not the kind "I need an app to access that service", but on TV, where I consume most of my YouTube content, I DO need an app. Because otherwise the UX will be an absolute nightmare.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      I'm not arguing against specific UX, i'm arguing having something as "unsmart" as a TV embed a computer system you don't control is overly dangerous and can lead to undesired side-effects such as random advertisement popping up, or remote hackers accessing your TV's microphone/camera if it has some. Be sure to let us know how Newpipe fares on your "smart" TV :) EDIT: It appears there's a lot more Android clients than i knew https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use-third-party-application https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use-third-party-application
kebman 5y ago
How does it measure up to LBRY / Odysee?
- southerntofu 5y ago
  LBRY appears to be a BTC-forked blockchain, which has a number of disadvantages: - every node needs to keep a complete history of the ledger so as the network grows only the biggest players can stay up... what does that say of Sybil/51% attacks? - every video published has a public record, and i assume everyone paying to watch a video is also recorded publicly; no private communities - their blockchain can only (according to odysee website) process 10K events per second... which they're proud of for some reason? that's a very low number compared to eg. Bittorrent DHT or Fediverse activity - LBRY appears to favorize traditional "intellectual property" and pay-per-view model, not a donation-based economy of libre content - LBRY relies on a "cryptocoin" to achieve their economic model, and their tech was not conceived to prevent speculation; i would even argue it's architectured for speculation, as it's based on Bitcoin without learning from any of Bitcoin's weaknesses/mistakes (from what i could read) ; Tribler/Taler sound like much more reliable solutions for such microtransactions - LBRY is pushed by a for-profit company, whereas Peertube is developed by a bunch of volunteers, coordinated by the french libre culture/software non-profit Framasoft as part of their "Degooglize Internet" campaign [0] [0] https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/ https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/
Animats 5y ago
PeerTube does not have enough bandwidth to work. Try PeerTube. Here's a cat video. Posted 1 week ago, 38 views, duration 10 seconds. https://peertube.tv/w/tsvCimhEaLSTZD16B3gqBQ https://peertube.tv/w/tsvCimhEaLSTZD16B3gqBQ Even as the only watcher, and with gigabit Internet both ways at my end, it stuttered, then stalled completely. For short videos, you'd be better off putting them on a shared hosting site as .mp4 files. Peer to peer video hosting is just not a good idea for bandwidth reasons.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Oh wow that is shockingly bad. The 10 second video buffered out 5 times while I tried watching. I am on a gigabit fiber connection.
- yawaramin 5y ago
  Worked fine for me with maybe one stutter. Anyway, that's once instance of PT, there are others. E.g. I've never noticed any issues with https://watch.ocaml.org/ https://watch.ocaml.org/
  - echlipse 5y ago
    Both the videos referenced above worked smoothly for me. I’m on a 30 mbps cable Internet connection.
    - rnotaro 5y ago
      I guess it depends on the peers. I have 600 down and it was still choppy on the first load.
      - foxfluff 5y ago
        I feel like there's a poor buffering algorithm involved. It was a bit choppy for me even though the playback bar indicated that the video had loaded well ahead of time. Downloading that video with wget took me 0.4 seconds. Connecting to peertube.tv (peertube.tv)|77.168.118.55|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 1058937 (1.0M) [video/mp4] Saving to: ‘de5a56e4-036c-4536-b1a6-4ac45b872516-576.mp4’ de5a56e4-036c-4536- 100%[===================>] 1.01M 2.79MB/s in 0.4s
smoldesu 5y ago
Off topic, but the other day I switched to FreeTube (freetube.io) and it's been quite nice. It's not a comprehensive YouTube client (lacks true theming, plugins, etc.), it offers a lot of features that will be helpful for people who want to use YouTube without Google getting in the way.
whitefirered 5y ago
I like these types of video websites, but a huge reason they will never beat YouTube is the age. YouTube has a huge abundance of content that spans pretty far back. When you have that much content its kinda hard to beat.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  How much of the content you enjoyed on Youtube ten years ago is still there? I've witnessed a lot of videos taken down... I'd much rather trust a non-profit host with my content than Youtube.
  - whitefirered 5y ago
    While yes there are a lot of videos that are taken down, you can still find tons of videos from like 8-10 years ago easily. I noticed though that a lot of the older videos usually get taken down for copyright music, like old amvs, song re-uploads, etc. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to say, "Oh Google and YouTube are so great". I am only pointing out why many people including me will not fully switch over to other video platforms. Most other video platforms lack any content, and finding what you want is incredibly difficult. Where as YouTube you can find a plethora of things. Do I trust YouTube with my content? Yes, I don't really watch too many things which YouTube would want to censor like news or anything like that, and I usually watch stuff from certain channels (not recommended videos). Seriously, I dislike YouTube as much as the next person, but I am not going to switch over to an inferior platform (inferior in terms of content). Those people that are focused on open source, nonprofit, and privacy when it comes to platforms should continue to support and use this stuff, but understand most regular people don't care. Not saying it is not a problem, I just simply don't feel the need to fight YouTube that much and try to be a digital warrior about it.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Why don't we just use BitTorrent for videos? Popcorn time works reasonably well and we don't need a social layer, there are already plenty of them. I d like to see everything that i like being seeded with care by its owners
- new_guy 5y ago
  Because people don't care about the actual videos, it's the social aspect drives these sites. You could upload a video of paint drying and get an active comment thread going on some sites.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    Maybe. But you can have that even if YouTube was just a frontend for torrents. I care about some of the videos, eg lectures interesting conferences etc,
- slim 5y ago
  Popcorntime does not have channels unfortunately
- Popegaf 5y ago
  It does use Webtorrent by default (it can be turned off).
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    Not that it seems to do much. Every time I have used it I have only been connected to the server peer. I doubt there are many people with an active tab open for a particular video.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      It may be because noone else was watching that video, or because your browser doesn't support WebRTC, or because your browser blocked the 3rd party request to the STUN server for peer discovery. In any case, the server could and should have other peer instances seed its content ; if that's not the case, you could contact the instance admin and suggest they get that kind of replication going to ease distribution.
parasanti 5y ago
Before you think of how awful this site is, remember youtube in the beginning as well. This could be a great alternative, especially if they don't remove people without a good explanation, sell your personal info or try to sway an opinion.
Barrin92 5y ago
I don't understand the economics of this at all. Video distribution is bandwidth heavy. If you're running your own peer tube instance the server costs are surely going to outstrip any revenue you make from it. if users have to carry that load and seed your stuff they'll have to waste their own storage. What is the incentive for anyone to do this? Exacerbated by the fact that the entire thing mostly seems to attract people who get banned from anything else so the content isn't even going to attract advertisers.
- throwuxiytayq 5y ago
  And yet, torrents are still a thing.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    because people want to download illegal movies and porn, or host linux isos as a service for the commons. There's practically no commercial activity around torrents because it's an incredibly inefficient way to serve large amounts of data.
    - gtirloni 5y ago
      How's it inefficient?
      - Barrin92 5y ago
        because decentralized systems need to redundantly store data, a lot. Youtube accounts for, depending on the source 15% of global internet traffic. The reason you can watch videos at 1080p wherever you are in the world buffer free is because the system is ridiculously optimized, cached locally, and so on. Do you want to go back to 180p because one of the two guys hosting that five year old video with 50k views you liked just went offline?
        gtirloni 5y ago
        Your second paragraph disproves your first, do you realize that? Youtube caches locally in a decentralized fashion, with redundant data, etc.
osigurdson 5y ago
Step 1: Change the name.
- Jorengarenar 5y ago
  Of the video, of the channel, of the instance or of the app?
mattl 5y ago
Followed the link and clicked play and it stopped after one second.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  This is an issue with the instance which may not have enough bandwidth to serve the video. There's two mechanisms to counteract this: - clients viewing a video will seed (share) it along, so as a video becomes more popular it becomes more widely available - other instances can seed one another's video to help them reach a broader audience (geographically speaking) I have no clue about how this instance is operated but it's a fair bet that it's not replicated by other instances (yet), and that it's operating from a network location that doesn't have very good connectivity with you.
zelphirkalt 5y ago
What really interests me is, how I can host a PeerTube instance, without getting into all sorts of responsibility issues, like people uploading videos containing illegal stuff (upload filter laws). I would love to give my server something to do, but with the current law, I simply do not want to be responsible for what people upload and spread via my instance and my server. Does PeerTube offer me a way of reviewing videos before they can be found and a way of telling people, that they are responsible themselves and have that accepted by law? And how do other instance admins manage this? Does anyone here have that experience?
- southerntofu 5y ago
  I think the usual approach is similar to any other service hosting: don't do open registrations unless you feel like dealing with the moderation and legal consequences. Have a contact form where people can request an account. Create accounts for trusted peers. I'm unaware if Peertube has a "moderate first" setting but it should not be hard to implement... it's just not the assumed usecase of Peertube so far.
criley2 5y ago
The primary motivation of most creators is to make money. What is PeerTube paying per view? 0$? Why would any creator spend all that time and money making content to give away for free? Do you give away your daily work for free? They can easily use something like Patreon or one of the many pay-only tube sites if they're giving up on ads and asking for donations/subscriptions/etc. I mean, I'm not against the idea, it just seems to fundamentally misunderstand why creators choose youtube. If Youtube paid $0/1000 views... the majority of the top 1000 creators would be gone overnight.
- Taywee 5y ago
  Personally, I do tons of things for free because I enjoy doing them. Nobody needs to pay me to play my piano, paint a painting, or run a D&D campaign, and all of that takes effort and skill. I remember the old days of YouTube when most people making videos were doing it for the joy of it, not profit. I understand that doesn't scale forever, but at the same time, there's a vast range of video creation that doesn't need to be profit-driven, or can easily be crowd funded. I understand the point of big budget video creation, but that's not most creators, just like most companies aren't Google and shouldn't be trying to solve their problems that are a 1000th the size with Google-scale solutions. Simply, there is a place for small budget videos. I'd even argue that the majority should be small budget, and that advertising and budget inflation have on average been more bad for YouTube than good.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > The primary motivation of most creators is to make money. Most creators/uploaders do not monetize their works. This is just the tiny minority that Youtube highlights to keep their business flowing. A lot of content is produced by amateurs and non-profits, and Youtube does them a huge disservice by displaying ads (which they don't benefit from), tracking their viewers, recommending bad-quality/outrageous content (eg. conspiracy videos), and copyright-striking their videos even when it is clear no law was violated (eg. fair use). > Why would any creator spend all that time and money making content to give away for free? Do you give away your daily work for free? I definitely would not give my work for free for companies to profit from, but i'm happy to engage in free labor for non-profits and for my peers. This is a well-known paradox in the libre culture/software, especially with non-copyleft licenses (eg. MIT) which enable a for-profit to siphon of volunteer work without ever contributing something back in return. See also: OpenSSL maintainership "scandal" back in the day. > If Youtube paid $0/1000 views... the majority of the top 1000 creators would be gone overnight. Would that be such a loss? Looks like these channels are just outrage/advertisement machine with very little content creation going on... at least form an outsider's perspective.
hendersoon 5y ago
I like that they let users disable uploads. How do you get rid of the giant left column, other than zooming way in?
- Jorengarenar 5y ago
  By clicking hamburger button in left top corner?
awak3ning 5y ago
This is what the libre ethos is all about, so proud to see people putting their values and morality before profit!
midnightGhost 5y ago
There is Lbry as an alternative to YouTube as well. It seems interesting. https://lbry.com/ https://lbry.com/
- southerntofu 5y ago
  That looks like another cryptoscam powered by blockchain. What are these ecological consequences of their using a BTC-like protocol? What happens when their 10K transactions-per-second blockchain is overwhelmed?
emerged 5y ago
PeerTube, you need to remove view counts. They broadcast to new users how few people are at this party and how lame it is, let’s go back to that YouTube party.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > how lame it is How so? Just because something is not popular (yet?) doesn't mean it's lame. Also, view counts on a single instance are not representative of the entire federation. Although i agree removing view counts would be good, because it produces bad incentives to artificially inflate your view count (which i've never witnessed on Peertube instances so far, but is possible).
  - emerged 5y ago
    It’s not that I think it really is lame, just demonstrating the thought process of your average user clicking on a PeerTube link.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      Ah, makes sense thanks for the explanation!
oliv__ 5y ago
This is the best parody I've ever seen in my life. EDIT: Thanks for censoring my comment CCP
oliv__ 5y ago
Since when is there comment censorship on HN? Just had my comment disappear
- zavertnik 5y ago
  What was censored? The mods here on HN are good people, if you had a comment unfairly removed, I'm sure it was in error rather than malice.
- dang 5y ago
  If you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28590055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28590055, the comment was flagkilled by users. However, please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28602116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28602116 - I've banned your account because you've been breaking the site rules repeatedly and egregiously. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com and commit to using the site as intended. That means no more flamebait, no more unsubstantive comments, no more snark, and certainly no more personal attacks.
LAC-Tech 5y ago
If my favourite youtubers started posting exclusively on peer tube I wouldn't mind at all. One has outright stated he suspects he'll be cancelled at some point, and already dual uploads. And I check his instance fairly regularly. To break it down further - it's not much of a deal breaker to go to "coolvideoguy.com" instead of searching "cool video guy" in the youtube search bar.
- wiether 5y ago
  I guess it depends on how you consume media. A big part of what I consume on YouTube is on my TV, thanks to subscriptions to channels. Since there is no Android TV app for Peertube at the moment, the only way I would watch content from a Peertube channel would be on my computer. Which is not how I like consuming this content.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    You probably have a web browser on your TV that could go to any peertube instance. Even if it doesn't support WebRTC, plain HTTP streaming would be used as fallback. Also NewPipe client on Android has Peertube support. Slightly off-topic, but do you think having a computer you don't control running in your TV is such a great idea? It sounds like an IoT/security nightmare, unless you can flash a system you control on there.
jdauriemma 5y ago
Autoplay warning
wiether 5y ago
Funny story : I tried going fullscreen at the exact moment when he's showing his YouTube metrics which he blurred for legal reasons. But I thought it was an issue with the player which wasn't able to download the video at a sufficient quality. So I was like "yeah, it's crap, I can't see sh*t; YouTube's better".
gnramires 5y ago
Apart from the awesome technology, there is some great content in those instances. It's quite hard to discover genuine and exploratory DIY on youtube, small artists, etc.
jfax 5y ago
I love peertube and spend a lot of time these days watching videos on it, perhaps moreso than youtube now. This video is not very good however, there's something not very stimulating to the imagination about moving from youtube yet still using shallow buzzwords like "content creator", "monetise", "open source".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

442 points by x14km2d 5y ago

aledalgrande 5y ago

lol buffering on a 100Mb

wizzwizz4 5y ago
Considering it's being hit by Hacker News, I'd say that's not that bad.
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  If it's peer to peer, shouldn't more viewers be better?
  - Popegaf 5y ago
    It depends on the configuration of the server. Some disable Webtorrent (probably because it doesn't support HLS). When they do that then I think it pulls from the federation, which then depends on how many have mirrored it.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      I didn't know it pulled from the federation at all! That's interesting.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- SilverRed 5y ago
  It's always been like that for me. Even the lowest quality videos struggle to play.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    What region are you in, and what instances are you failing to access? Smaller/newer instances generally don't have a lot of "peer instances" seeding their content, so that could be why you're having trouble accessing it. Not everyone has Youtube-level bandwidth, but even Youtube is very hard to access in many parts of the world. Peertube is designed in a decentralized manner so that people who enjoy your content can setup a local instance in their neighborhood to mirror (seed) your content.
mattl 5y ago
Poor to poor

petermcneeley 5y ago

Why is the upload bytes always zero for me? (I would guess they dont do NAT holepunch)

3gg 5y ago
I was wondering the same thing. Looks like the videos are shared using WebRTC, which I have disabled in my browser.
- Popegaf 5y ago
  WebTorrent (https://webtorrent.io/ https://webtorrent.io/) is built upon WebRTC, but I believe PeerTube should fallback to simple HTTP mp4. There is a download link handy that you can open in the browser, vlc, mpv or your favorite video player. https://diode.zone/download/streaming-playlists/hls/videos/b5565a0a-7abb-45a7-86d9-0954852683be-1080-fragmented.mp4 https://diode.zone/download/streaming-playlists/hls/videos/b...
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Video playback fallbacks to MP4 over HTTP(S). However this does not work for seeding. Grandparent comment was about why upload count is zero.
southerntofu 5y ago
It appears for the moment Peertube uses hardcoded STUN servers for WebRTC peer discovery. [0] It may be that your browser is blocking those 3rd party requests for privacy reasons. [0] https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/3177 https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/3177

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago

One thing I really dislike about Fediverse services is that their landing pages are always about joining/signing up. For Twitter-like applications this might be ok. But for something like YouTube, I definitely want to browse the content a bit before signing up.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
> One thing I really dislike about Fediverse services is that their landing pages are always about joining/signing up. That's because their “landing pages” (project advertisement websites) aren't instances. The home page of any instance (e.g. https://diode.zone/ https://diode.zone/) will show you the content visible from that instance.
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
  This isn’t true of Mastodon or Pixelfed instances (or wasn’t when I tried running one). But, if you’re going to be called “join peertube” you need to have the sort of content that makes people want to join: copy about what peertube is + a list of instances isn’t that.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Most Mastodon instances have it a single click away from the sign-up page. (But yes, I agree. Mastodon isn't great, even though it's popular.)
    - FalconSensei 5y ago
      For many people 1 click (or even an entire screen scroll-down) is too much. If PeerTube is supposed to be an YouTube alternative, you need to see videos and a search right away. I know it's not an instance and blah-blah-blah, but those are technical details that (possible) users don't give a single F.
      - lokedhs 5y ago

chairhairair 5y ago

The channel in this post has 20 YouTube subscribers and no more than a couple thousand total YouTube views. The trending page on PeerTube shows a list of videos with at most a few dozen views. Is PeerTube supremely unpopular (seems to have been launched several years ago: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube), or am I missing something? Does it really have an order of magnitude more Github stars (https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube) than daily viewers?

freshthought 5y ago
Perhaps the most notable fact is how upvoted this article is. Shows you how much people want to believe, maybe?
mraudiobook_com 5y ago
Yes. Amazingly very few seemsl to care about decentralizing the web and monitary systems. Arguably the most important invention since the internet itself ALL the big companies have huge incentive to kill the movement because they can't make money off it.
ShamelessC 5y ago
> The channel in this post has 20 YouTube subscribers and no more than a couple thousand total YouTube views. ...that's quite a lot even on YouTube, no? I always assumed the videos recommended for their sheer popularity were a "top 1%" sort of situation.
- spiderice 5y ago
  No, this is nowhere near a lot, even for small channels. Make a quality video about something useful and there is a good chance you get more views than this persons whole channel
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Well, if you're comparing against all YouTube users, or even all YouTube users who have ever uploaded a video, then yes, it's a lot. On the other hand, compared to most content being viewed on YouTube, it's not even tiny, it's minuscule. There are many niche hobbyist communities or individual hobbyist singers getting much more than that. 20 subscribers basically means that not even your friends and family are looking at your channel.

paulirish 5y ago

The submission links to 4:19 into the video, probably unintentionally? Sadly peertube seems to have to buffer from the beginning to play from this position.

southerntofu 5y ago
> Sadly peertube seems to have to buffer from the beginning to play from this position. That's weird. What browser are you running? Is it downloading video directly from the server or is it doing WebRTC P2P download? The former (direct download) is intended as fallback mode and i believe it uses HLS chunking which may or may not be well supported by your browser.

jstx1 5y ago

I was wondering who they were and why they were self-saboting. Then I saw that it's a channel with 20 subscribers on youtube with view numbers in the single digits for some videos. So somebody went from not being watched on youtube, to not being watched on peertube. How did this even make it to the front page?

uuddlrlr 5y ago
Peertube is interesting tech, and YouTube's de facto monopoly on video hosting is less than ideal. Especially considering that it's owned by the world's largest attention harvesting operation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- legitster 5y ago
  > de facto monopoly on video hosting How do people believe this is even remotely true? I have so many options to host videos, least of which is just housing itself on my own damn server! I don't know if the complaint here is that no one else will do it for me for free, or that no one else will just hand me viewers for free.
  - sircastor 5y ago
    It’s not literally just hosting. That’s not that hard. It’s distribution, discovery, promotion, accessibility. Right now, if you want your video to be seen, you need to be on YouTube.
  - MrGilbert 5y ago
    > I don't know if the complaint here is that no one else will do it for me for free, or that no one else will just hand me viewers for free. Devil's advocate: Which paid video-website with community created content the size similar to Youtube may I join? That's where the "de-facto" monopoly claim comes from, I guess.
  - 5y ago

tinyhouse 5y ago

"exploited by ads". Well, YouTube needs to make money somehow. If you don't want ads you can pay a monthly fee like Netflix.

LightG 5y ago
True, but as a typical user, I wish they'd just be straight up about it. Basically, it's user experience degradation until you're forced to sign up. How about trying to just reach out and offer a service without killing my current experience? I pay for other subscriptions so this isn't a money thing, but I won't for youtube on principle. They ruined that platform.
carlhjerpe 5y ago
They're probably still tracking me even though I pay right?
- hortense 5y ago
  You can turn your history off if you want, but then you'll get suggestions of videos you've already watched.
  - carlhjerpe 5y ago
    I've noticed and turned it back on tbh, but does it actually mean they're not tracking me? They're already tracking me all over the web
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      It certainly doesn't mean they're not tracking you. It just means you opt-out of the little advantages you had from the tracking. That is, if you consider personalized recommendations to be an advantage.
3gg 5y ago
Youtube forcing a subscription on everybody would be self-sabotage. Their existence and ability to make profits rests entirely on ads. And while the ads could be more ethical, they choose instead to track people in every possible way, exploiting their identity and fingerprint on the platform -- and outside the platform -- for maximum profit. So the ads are not a choice, but the soul of the product. Peertube, instead, does not exist to make profits. So yes, exploited by ads.

prvc 5y ago

Does distributed hosting really work for streaming video, especially along "the long tail"?

southerntofu 5y ago
Following a quick search I assume you're referring to popularity of niche content? [0] Peertube should fare just fine with that. It's just important that instance operators consider the broader implications of running an instance: - you should find an organizational/financial model to still be around in a decade - you should find like-minded instance operators to seed one another's content across continents, to ease reachability If those two aspects are taken care of, "long tail" delivery should really not be a problem for Peertube. [0] https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/ https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/

test542 5y ago

If you want PeerTube to become popular, make it easier for people to upload videos. At the moment it's too confusing and complicated; no content creator cares what "instance" means and they never will. No one who creates an account and finds that "uploads are not allowed on this instance" or encounters some similar problem is going to waste any more time trying to use it. If you leave it the way it is now, it's always just gonna be by nerds for nerds. And more people are going to be enslaved by Big Brother who controls YouTube. So please make it accessible to normal people.

amelius 5y ago
See also why PGP failed.
southerntofu 5y ago
Peertube was born from a french non-profit (Framasoft) as part of their "Degooglizing internet" campaign. It's intended to be deployed to empower existing communities to share videos, rather than as a generic video upload service. It's just like you create a blog: you need to find a host for it and most websites don't allow you to just start uploading content. A growing number of non-profits are starting to embrace it and for that usecase Peertube is perfect. If there's no peertube instance for your community/usecase, you could start one with a few friends/neighbors.

dartharva 5y ago

Odysee is functionally a much better Youtube alternative than Peertube. Too bad it mostly acts like the Youtube equivalent of Parler now.

southerntofu 5y ago
As someone who has never used Odysee, how is it better? I'm sure Peertube project contributors would be happy to receive constructive feedback on how to improve their project.
- dartharva 5y ago
  As an end-user, the noticeable difference for me is that when you play a video on Odysee, it plays, unlike Peertube videos.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Can you reproduce this issue with other peertube instances? Also, what region are you from, and where is the failing instance located? Distributing videos requires good connectivity so it's not a surprise a smaller instance which is not seeded by other instances elsewhere have a hard time serving you. See also: https://docs.joinpeertube.org/admin-following-instances?id=instances-redundancy https://docs.joinpeertube.org/admin-following-instances?id=i...

varispeed 5y ago

When using such federated platforms, do you leak your IP address to other people viewing the content?

Popegaf 5y ago
If WebRTC is activated in your browser and webtorrent (https://webtorrent.io/ https://webtorrent.io/) is being used by the instance, yes. However, you could say the same for Zoom or most video calling platform, if I'm not mistaken.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  Most video calling platforms only expose you to the actual people you are calling which is generally a non issue. Torrents have a public list of all content and all hosts with what content they hold. This is required for peer discovery and it means that a malicious party can just suck up the whole DHT and create a database of every video each IP address watched.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Yes, It currently displays the following warning: > Friendly Reminder: the sharing system used for this video implies that some technical information about your system (such as a public IP address) can be sent to other peers. GitHub issue upon which this banner was decided upon[1] [1] https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/316 https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/316
southerntofu 5y ago
For Peertube specifically yes, if you're seeding it (opt-out if your browser supports it). However, this concern is mitigated because Peertube uses open standards, so it's very easy to use various proxying services for privacy concerns. It's unlikely that any such 3rd party clients will ever get blocked. Comparing to Youtube: a single malevolent company tracks everyone's actions for nefarious purposes, purposefully changes internal "protocol" regularly to break 3rd party clients (youtube-dl, Newpipe) and blocks scrapers and other archival systems. Overall, Peertube has much more privacy-friendly capabilities than Youtube ever will have.

mattl 5y ago

There’s no peertube app for my devices —- I’m not going to watch YouTube on my computer

southerntofu 5y ago
Why do you need an app? All it takes is a webbrowser. Also if you're on Android, i believe Newpipe (FLOSS) supports Peertube sources.
- wiether 5y ago
  Sure, I definitely want to use a web-browser on my TV with a remote control. On mobile I'm not the kind "I need an app to access that service", but on TV, where I consume most of my YouTube content, I DO need an app. Because otherwise the UX will be an absolute nightmare.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    I'm not arguing against specific UX, i'm arguing having something as "unsmart" as a TV embed a computer system you don't control is overly dangerous and can lead to undesired side-effects such as random advertisement popping up, or remote hackers accessing your TV's microphone/camera if it has some. Be sure to let us know how Newpipe fares on your "smart" TV :) EDIT: It appears there's a lot more Android clients than i knew https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use-third-party-application https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use-third-party-application

kebman 5y ago

How does it measure up to LBRY / Odysee?

southerntofu 5y ago
LBRY appears to be a BTC-forked blockchain, which has a number of disadvantages: - every node needs to keep a complete history of the ledger so as the network grows only the biggest players can stay up... what does that say of Sybil/51% attacks? - every video published has a public record, and i assume everyone paying to watch a video is also recorded publicly; no private communities - their blockchain can only (according to odysee website) process 10K events per second... which they're proud of for some reason? that's a very low number compared to eg. Bittorrent DHT or Fediverse activity - LBRY appears to favorize traditional "intellectual property" and pay-per-view model, not a donation-based economy of libre content - LBRY relies on a "cryptocoin" to achieve their economic model, and their tech was not conceived to prevent speculation; i would even argue it's architectured for speculation, as it's based on Bitcoin without learning from any of Bitcoin's weaknesses/mistakes (from what i could read) ; Tribler/Taler sound like much more reliable solutions for such microtransactions - LBRY is pushed by a for-profit company, whereas Peertube is developed by a bunch of volunteers, coordinated by the french libre culture/software non-profit Framasoft as part of their "Degooglize Internet" campaign [0] [0] https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/ https://degooglisons-internet.org/en/

Animats 5y ago

PeerTube does not have enough bandwidth to work. Try PeerTube. Here's a cat video. Posted 1 week ago, 38 views, duration 10 seconds. https://peertube.tv/w/tsvCimhEaLSTZD16B3gqBQ https://peertube.tv/w/tsvCimhEaLSTZD16B3gqBQ Even as the only watcher, and with gigabit Internet both ways at my end, it stuttered, then stalled completely. For short videos, you'd be better off putting them on a shared hosting site as .mp4 files. Peer to peer video hosting is just not a good idea for bandwidth reasons.

mdoms 5y ago
Oh wow that is shockingly bad. The 10 second video buffered out 5 times while I tried watching. I am on a gigabit fiber connection.
yawaramin 5y ago
Worked fine for me with maybe one stutter. Anyway, that's once instance of PT, there are others. E.g. I've never noticed any issues with https://watch.ocaml.org/ https://watch.ocaml.org/
- echlipse 5y ago
  Both the videos referenced above worked smoothly for me. I’m on a 30 mbps cable Internet connection.
  - rnotaro 5y ago
    I guess it depends on the peers. I have 600 down and it was still choppy on the first load.
    - foxfluff 5y ago
      I feel like there's a poor buffering algorithm involved. It was a bit choppy for me even though the playback bar indicated that the video had loaded well ahead of time. Downloading that video with wget took me 0.4 seconds. Connecting to peertube.tv (peertube.tv)|77.168.118.55|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 1058937 (1.0M) [video/mp4] Saving to: ‘de5a56e4-036c-4536-b1a6-4ac45b872516-576.mp4’ de5a56e4-036c-4536- 100%[===================>] 1.01M 2.79MB/s in 0.4s

smoldesu 5y ago

Off topic, but the other day I switched to FreeTube (freetube.io) and it's been quite nice. It's not a comprehensive YouTube client (lacks true theming, plugins, etc.), it offers a lot of features that will be helpful for people who want to use YouTube without Google getting in the way.

whitefirered 5y ago

I like these types of video websites, but a huge reason they will never beat YouTube is the age. YouTube has a huge abundance of content that spans pretty far back. When you have that much content its kinda hard to beat.

southerntofu 5y ago
How much of the content you enjoyed on Youtube ten years ago is still there? I've witnessed a lot of videos taken down... I'd much rather trust a non-profit host with my content than Youtube.
- whitefirered 5y ago
  While yes there are a lot of videos that are taken down, you can still find tons of videos from like 8-10 years ago easily. I noticed though that a lot of the older videos usually get taken down for copyright music, like old amvs, song re-uploads, etc. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to say, "Oh Google and YouTube are so great". I am only pointing out why many people including me will not fully switch over to other video platforms. Most other video platforms lack any content, and finding what you want is incredibly difficult. Where as YouTube you can find a plethora of things. Do I trust YouTube with my content? Yes, I don't really watch too many things which YouTube would want to censor like news or anything like that, and I usually watch stuff from certain channels (not recommended videos). Seriously, I dislike YouTube as much as the next person, but I am not going to switch over to an inferior platform (inferior in terms of content). Those people that are focused on open source, nonprofit, and privacy when it comes to platforms should continue to support and use this stuff, but understand most regular people don't care. Not saying it is not a problem, I just simply don't feel the need to fight YouTube that much and try to be a digital warrior about it.

cblconfederate 5y ago

Why don't we just use BitTorrent for videos? Popcorn time works reasonably well and we don't need a social layer, there are already plenty of them. I d like to see everything that i like being seeded with care by its owners

new_guy 5y ago
Because people don't care about the actual videos, it's the social aspect drives these sites. You could upload a video of paint drying and get an active comment thread going on some sites.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Maybe. But you can have that even if YouTube was just a frontend for torrents. I care about some of the videos, eg lectures interesting conferences etc,
slim 5y ago
Popcorntime does not have channels unfortunately
Popegaf 5y ago
It does use Webtorrent by default (it can be turned off).
- SilverRed 5y ago
  Not that it seems to do much. Every time I have used it I have only been connected to the server peer. I doubt there are many people with an active tab open for a particular video.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    It may be because noone else was watching that video, or because your browser doesn't support WebRTC, or because your browser blocked the 3rd party request to the STUN server for peer discovery. In any case, the server could and should have other peer instances seed its content ; if that's not the case, you could contact the instance admin and suggest they get that kind of replication going to ease distribution.

parasanti 5y ago

Before you think of how awful this site is, remember youtube in the beginning as well. This could be a great alternative, especially if they don't remove people without a good explanation, sell your personal info or try to sway an opinion.

Barrin92 5y ago

I don't understand the economics of this at all. Video distribution is bandwidth heavy. If you're running your own peer tube instance the server costs are surely going to outstrip any revenue you make from it. if users have to carry that load and seed your stuff they'll have to waste their own storage. What is the incentive for anyone to do this? Exacerbated by the fact that the entire thing mostly seems to attract people who get banned from anything else so the content isn't even going to attract advertisers.

throwuxiytayq 5y ago
And yet, torrents are still a thing.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  because people want to download illegal movies and porn, or host linux isos as a service for the commons. There's practically no commercial activity around torrents because it's an incredibly inefficient way to serve large amounts of data.
  - gtirloni 5y ago
    How's it inefficient?
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      because decentralized systems need to redundantly store data, a lot. Youtube accounts for, depending on the source 15% of global internet traffic. The reason you can watch videos at 1080p wherever you are in the world buffer free is because the system is ridiculously optimized, cached locally, and so on. Do you want to go back to 180p because one of the two guys hosting that five year old video with 50k views you liked just went offline?
      - gtirloni 5y ago
        Your second paragraph disproves your first, do you realize that? Youtube caches locally in a decentralized fashion, with redundant data, etc.

osigurdson 5y ago

Step 1: Change the name.

Jorengarenar 5y ago
Of the video, of the channel, of the instance or of the app?

mattl 5y ago

Followed the link and clicked play and it stopped after one second.

southerntofu 5y ago
This is an issue with the instance which may not have enough bandwidth to serve the video. There's two mechanisms to counteract this: - clients viewing a video will seed (share) it along, so as a video becomes more popular it becomes more widely available - other instances can seed one another's video to help them reach a broader audience (geographically speaking) I have no clue about how this instance is operated but it's a fair bet that it's not replicated by other instances (yet), and that it's operating from a network location that doesn't have very good connectivity with you.

zelphirkalt 5y ago

What really interests me is, how I can host a PeerTube instance, without getting into all sorts of responsibility issues, like people uploading videos containing illegal stuff (upload filter laws). I would love to give my server something to do, but with the current law, I simply do not want to be responsible for what people upload and spread via my instance and my server. Does PeerTube offer me a way of reviewing videos before they can be found and a way of telling people, that they are responsible themselves and have that accepted by law? And how do other instance admins manage this? Does anyone here have that experience?

southerntofu 5y ago
I think the usual approach is similar to any other service hosting: don't do open registrations unless you feel like dealing with the moderation and legal consequences. Have a contact form where people can request an account. Create accounts for trusted peers. I'm unaware if Peertube has a "moderate first" setting but it should not be hard to implement... it's just not the assumed usecase of Peertube so far.

criley2 5y ago

The primary motivation of most creators is to make money. What is PeerTube paying per view? 0$? Why would any creator spend all that time and money making content to give away for free? Do you give away your daily work for free? They can easily use something like Patreon or one of the many pay-only tube sites if they're giving up on ads and asking for donations/subscriptions/etc. I mean, I'm not against the idea, it just seems to fundamentally misunderstand why creators choose youtube. If Youtube paid $0/1000 views... the majority of the top 1000 creators would be gone overnight.

Taywee 5y ago
Personally, I do tons of things for free because I enjoy doing them. Nobody needs to pay me to play my piano, paint a painting, or run a D&D campaign, and all of that takes effort and skill. I remember the old days of YouTube when most people making videos were doing it for the joy of it, not profit. I understand that doesn't scale forever, but at the same time, there's a vast range of video creation that doesn't need to be profit-driven, or can easily be crowd funded. I understand the point of big budget video creation, but that's not most creators, just like most companies aren't Google and shouldn't be trying to solve their problems that are a 1000th the size with Google-scale solutions. Simply, there is a place for small budget videos. I'd even argue that the majority should be small budget, and that advertising and budget inflation have on average been more bad for YouTube than good.
southerntofu 5y ago
> The primary motivation of most creators is to make money. Most creators/uploaders do not monetize their works. This is just the tiny minority that Youtube highlights to keep their business flowing. A lot of content is produced by amateurs and non-profits, and Youtube does them a huge disservice by displaying ads (which they don't benefit from), tracking their viewers, recommending bad-quality/outrageous content (eg. conspiracy videos), and copyright-striking their videos even when it is clear no law was violated (eg. fair use). > Why would any creator spend all that time and money making content to give away for free? Do you give away your daily work for free? I definitely would not give my work for free for companies to profit from, but i'm happy to engage in free labor for non-profits and for my peers. This is a well-known paradox in the libre culture/software, especially with non-copyleft licenses (eg. MIT) which enable a for-profit to siphon of volunteer work without ever contributing something back in return. See also: OpenSSL maintainership "scandal" back in the day. > If Youtube paid $0/1000 views... the majority of the top 1000 creators would be gone overnight. Would that be such a loss? Looks like these channels are just outrage/advertisement machine with very little content creation going on... at least form an outsider's perspective.

hendersoon 5y ago

I like that they let users disable uploads. How do you get rid of the giant left column, other than zooming way in?

Jorengarenar 5y ago
By clicking hamburger button in left top corner?

awak3ning 5y ago

This is what the libre ethos is all about, so proud to see people putting their values and morality before profit!

midnightGhost 5y ago

There is Lbry as an alternative to YouTube as well. It seems interesting. https://lbry.com/ https://lbry.com/

southerntofu 5y ago
That looks like another cryptoscam powered by blockchain. What are these ecological consequences of their using a BTC-like protocol? What happens when their 10K transactions-per-second blockchain is overwhelmed?

emerged 5y ago

PeerTube, you need to remove view counts. They broadcast to new users how few people are at this party and how lame it is, let’s go back to that YouTube party.

southerntofu 5y ago
> how lame it is How so? Just because something is not popular (yet?) doesn't mean it's lame. Also, view counts on a single instance are not representative of the entire federation. Although i agree removing view counts would be good, because it produces bad incentives to artificially inflate your view count (which i've never witnessed on Peertube instances so far, but is possible).
- emerged 5y ago
  It’s not that I think it really is lame, just demonstrating the thought process of your average user clicking on a PeerTube link.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Ah, makes sense thanks for the explanation!

oliv__ 5y ago

This is the best parody I've ever seen in my life. EDIT: Thanks for censoring my comment CCP

oliv__ 5y ago

Since when is there comment censorship on HN? Just had my comment disappear

zavertnik 5y ago
What was censored? The mods here on HN are good people, if you had a comment unfairly removed, I'm sure it was in error rather than malice.
dang 5y ago
If you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28590055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28590055, the comment was flagkilled by users. However, please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28602116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28602116 - I've banned your account because you've been breaking the site rules repeatedly and egregiously. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com and commit to using the site as intended. That means no more flamebait, no more unsubstantive comments, no more snark, and certainly no more personal attacks.

LAC-Tech 5y ago

If my favourite youtubers started posting exclusively on peer tube I wouldn't mind at all. One has outright stated he suspects he'll be cancelled at some point, and already dual uploads. And I check his instance fairly regularly. To break it down further - it's not much of a deal breaker to go to "coolvideoguy.com" instead of searching "cool video guy" in the youtube search bar.

wiether 5y ago
I guess it depends on how you consume media. A big part of what I consume on YouTube is on my TV, thanks to subscriptions to channels. Since there is no Android TV app for Peertube at the moment, the only way I would watch content from a Peertube channel would be on my computer. Which is not how I like consuming this content.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  You probably have a web browser on your TV that could go to any peertube instance. Even if it doesn't support WebRTC, plain HTTP streaming would be used as fallback. Also NewPipe client on Android has Peertube support. Slightly off-topic, but do you think having a computer you don't control running in your TV is such a great idea? It sounds like an IoT/security nightmare, unless you can flash a system you control on there.

jdauriemma 5y ago

Autoplay warning

wiether 5y ago

Funny story : I tried going fullscreen at the exact moment when he's showing his YouTube metrics which he blurred for legal reasons. But I thought it was an issue with the player which wasn't able to download the video at a sufficient quality. So I was like "yeah, it's crap, I can't see sh*t; YouTube's better".

gnramires 5y ago

Apart from the awesome technology, there is some great content in those instances. It's quite hard to discover genuine and exploratory DIY on youtube, small artists, etc.

jfax 5y ago

I love peertube and spend a lot of time these days watching videos on it, perhaps moreso than youtube now. This video is not very good however, there's something not very stimulating to the imagination about moving from youtube yet still using shallow buzzwords like "content creator", "monetise", "open source".

deleted 5y ago

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