16 ms·

PeerTube: Free software to take back control of your videos

373 points by pmoriarty 5y ago

flerp 5y ago
Sounds like porn to me
onebot 5y ago
I hate to say it but brand, ui, ux really matter in terms of first impressions and overall "love" of a product. I wish they would put more work in branding and ux on their website to make it appear more appealing and professional.
- HidyBush 5y ago
  This is just the project's web page, the UI and UX of the actual hosted instances is pretty good in my opinion
porkloin 5y ago
I really hope that activitypub and the federated web end up becoming the technologies that "win" out of all the nonsense that is "Web3", but the wildly successful monetization of traditional web platforms and the "different-but-more" monetization of the crypto-obsessed vision of Web3 are nearly impossible for platforms like Peertube and Mastodon to effectively win out against.
- gue-ni 5y ago
  This has nothing to do with Web3
  - Jiejeing 5y ago
    Indeed, as it is an open solution and a working product.
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      And actually “web”.
- indigochill 5y ago
  I suspect the blockchain nonsense (which I refuse to let have the "Web3" title) will win out because there's so much commercial incentive and if there's one thing we've seen from the internet's history, it's that money and commercial interest accelerates adoption even when maybe it shouldn't. I also think federation has the Google conditioning of the mainstream working against it. The mainstream's been conditioned to think of the internet in terms of global platforms. Switching to interacting with smaller nodes is a paradigm shift that I don't believe most users are willing to make, especially given the benefits (like use of personal data and human-scale moderation) don't seem to matter to the majority given the apathy towards Facebook's and Google's business practices. That said, much like gopher still exists in parallel with HTTP, IMO it doesn't really matter which wins because the mainstream using one is not mutually exclusive with some of us using the other.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    > I suspect the blockchain nonsense (which I refuse to let have the "Web3" title) will win out because there's so much commercial incentive and if there's one thing we've seen from the internet's history, it's that money and commercial interest accelerates adoption even when maybe it shouldn't. Blockchain has already “won”: it's now a mainstream investment item, with investment firms bullish. But it also completely failed its goal of decentralization (almost every token holder uses a centralized exchange) and also isn't a competitor to the web at all: you can't connect to a blockchain with a web browser, and every “totally-not-web”3 platform out there is in fact built on top of the Web.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      It's not too late for the bubble to burst. When investors realize they put millions of dollars into a system which can process under 100 requests per second they may have a stroke and the whole thing could collapse like the .net bubble burst in the 90s and took away much of the landscape with it.
      - littlestymaar 5y ago
- waffle_maniac 5y ago
  Having a stake in a protocol incentivizes adoption and rewards network participation. The average person doesn’t buy stocks. This is a way for them to not be left behind by the elites.
- melony 5y ago
  Almost every production ready activitypub and federated web framework is under hard copyleft. There is not a single company who will use the technology (unless you are being boycotted by the fediverse like Gab). The fediverse creators explicitly made themselves hostile to innovation. You can't expect to be as popular as WordPress when you demand every user to open source their entire stack.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    It's not every end-user, it's every operator. And that's a good thing: it creates a positive feedback loop where i'm incited to share my patches because others are too. I'm not going to be at a disadvantage sharing code/ideas, because it's the standard within that community and it will benefit everyone equally. Copyleft is is not hostile to innovation, it's the only sustainable path to innovation and was the standard way of developing arts/sciences for millennia before the copyright industry was born and fucked up everything.
- armchairhacker 5y ago
  I don't think that these p2p technologies are going to win out. They're just objectively inferior to centralized services except in rare cases. But the fact that they're being maintained, and probably will be maintained in the future, is really good. In the event of a serious war or disaster, even locally, they could really come in handy.
- jiggunjer 5y ago
  I dunno, seems full p2p is going to compete with federation. The former has more technical problems to solve but avoids provider lock-in.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    There is nothing inherent about federation requiring provider lock-in. HTTP has redirect codes, XMPP has <Moved> stanzas, and even better the ZoT protocol (as used in Hubzilla) has crypto-identity over federated services so you can move by simply signing a new identity file mentioning new servers.
- elsjaako 5y ago
  I doubt they'll ever truly win, but they already work. You don't need to be as big as twitter to be a successful social media platform. I already use mastodon. Not in a "someone needs to be first" sense, but just as a platform I like. Peertube doesn't have the content to be there yet, and the model is a bit more difficult (as hosting video is just more expensive than hosting small bits of text and pictures, even with p2p features). There is some good content on there, but (for me) not enough to make it a social platform like YouTube. Also content discovery still isn't there yet. I recommend fedivideos@mas.to as a good resource to find some nice things.
ZetaZero 5y ago
When I search for a video, it tries to launch a popup window for another domain (sepiasearch.org) which Firefox blocks. Seems confusing for a typical viewer
- mdoms 5y ago
  And then if you click on one of the search results it will open in yet another popup with yet another weird domain with some oddball TLD like .win which looks even more sketchy.
- mlok 5y ago
  For information, Sepia Search is the search engine of PeerTube videos, channels and playlists, developed by Framasoft (developer of PeerTube)
ziml77 5y ago
If a video is unpopular, can it just disappear like a torrent that loses seeders? Or is there some mechanism to incentivize peers to hold on to videos that get like one view a month?
- HidyBush 5y ago
  No, if an instance publishes a video it means that it has to host it as a webseed. The torrent mechanism kicks in only when the video is being accessed by multiple people at the same time
- Animats 5y ago
  I've wondered about that. I put a video on PeerTube a few months ago.[1] It's a rendering test, of interest only to some people I'm working with. I'm curious to see how long it stays around and whether enough bandwidth is provided for streaming. So far, it's still up, despite very few views. [1] https://video.hardlimit.com/w/qBGD9LF8Ua3T7gLPCkE6vw https://video.hardlimit.com/w/qBGD9LF8Ua3T7gLPCkE6vw
- southerntofu 5y ago
  It depends on the host's policy. In the peertube model, your server is responsible for hosting the video so unless it closes down there's no reason for it to be unavailable. This has interesting consequences because it means you should not trust a random service provider to host your videos, but rather find a dedicated community on a specific topic, or an existing network (such as a local non-profit host) which is sustainable. There is currently no incentives for seeding and that's a good thing. Seeding (replication) is achieved as a community-to-community service between consenting sysadmins/communities. So if people from kolektiva.media find conf.tube content/concept interesting, the admins can setup say 1TB (or unlimited quota) of replicated content from conf.tube, and both sources will be listed as webseeds when you watch the video on either instance.
fullshark 5y ago
I was looking at this before and went to https://open.tube/ https://open.tube/ to explore the content to see how the community looked. The front page had a video of extreme violence on it and I never returned. Looking now the front page is mostly political flamebait. A real community growing on the back of this technology will require either YouTube screwing up royally or some sort of grassroots effort based on micro payments to content creators (as opposed to ads) I think.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  The problem with these decentralised platforms is that the first people to flock to them are the people who have been deplatformed by major services. Some services try to capitalize on that (Gab, Trump's Twitter) while others ignore the problem and end up destined to be abandoned by normal people. Large parts of the Mastodon network are filled with porn and alt-right accounts that got banned from Twitter. Youtube alternatives are quickly filled with conspiracy theories and other content even Youtube doesn't want its algorithm to push. Hell, even centralised services have this problem; DailyMotion is the last real Youtube alternative and these days it's mostly pirated content, from what I can tell. Until some major content providers switch, which they won't, because they'll lose their income, there won't be a transition to free software. I fear the Fediverse came about 10 years too late to be successful.
  - zaik 5y ago
    > Mastodon network are filled with porn and alt-right accounts that got banned from Twitter I did not notice this at all, even looking at the federated timeline.
    - jeroenhd 5y ago
      The alt-right servers tend to get defederated rather quickly. The porn usually doesn't show up, but when it does, it does with a vengeance. There's a _lot_ of it, you usually just don't encounter it.
  - Shared404 5y ago
russdpale 5y ago
I look through the listing of peers, and I don't see a single instance which trustworthy enough to devote my time too. For instance, checking the box "education" brings up a completely non sensible list that provides no context in which to make a judgement about the quality or character of the "tube". Also, this seems to have the same problem as mastodon, where I have to create an account for each tube, no thanks. Clicking "English" still brings up non english listings, furthering the difficulty of using the app. Good idea, poor execution.
- indigochill 5y ago
  > Also, this seems to have the same problem as mastodon, where I have to create an account for each tube, no thanks. Creating an account per node is federation working as intended. The idea is that this is then your identity across the network, the same way that you create an email address with an email provider that then lets you send email to users using other email providers. Each node should then network with other nodes to provide its users access to videos from nodes it trusts (same as Mastodon does - you don't have to be on the same node as a user you follow as long as your node networks with their node). The trust model is centered around your trust of the admin of a particular node, which brings a more human scale to the tech (particularly as compared to something like YouTube). Federation is coming back into vogue particularly now as a reaction to the Facebook/Google problem where a single entity collects all the data about all users of the platform and can unilaterally ban a user with no recourse. In a federated network a node decides what other nodes it federates with and so self-regulates. But email is an example of federated technology everyone uses.
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    > Federation is coming back into vogue particularly now as a reaction to the Facebook/Google problem where a single entity collects all the data about all users of the platform and can unilaterally ban a user with no recourse. In a federated network a node decides what other nodes it federates with and so self-regulates. But email is an example of federated technology everyone uses. I swear I read this exact sentence back in 2017 when Mastodon first came out with a splash and it has only gotten less relevant in the five years since.
mdoms 5y ago
I have tried to use PeerTube a number of times (when it comes up on HN, which it does very often). It is absolutely appalling in both usability (confusing, ugly and borderline hostile design) and technical (videos buffer constantly - this is table stakes for hosting video) aspects. I understand the appeal for uploaders, but I will never consider switching to PeerTube as a viewer. I won't even click a link to a PeerTube video because I know in advance it won't play properly.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  This depends on the specific instance and its traffic to your area. Cross-instance replication is well-supported by Peertube (the software) and if an instance is not loading well from your area you could consider using a local non-profit (or just ask some friends) to host a local peertube instance to replicate the content you find interesting and make it more easily accessible locally.
hannasanarion 5y ago
Putting things on a peer network is the very definition of losing control of your videos. Once something's p2p, can't ever be modified or taken down. It's a great value prop for pirates who want easy access to illegal movies and trolls who want their inflammatory opinions to ruffle feathers forever, but it's a pretty lousy deal for everyone else.
- jka 5y ago
  Can you see any ways in which uploading your videos to one of a (very) small number of market-leading platforms could be problematic, in contrast?
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    Certainly. But one thing that they definitely do, and that p2p hosting does not, is give people control of their videos, which is what this headline is claiming.
    - jka 5y ago
      Ok, thanks - I'm more ambivalent about the situation: I think it can be unclear, and can depend on people's perspectives regarding privacy and control, and the behaviours of the platforms and software available (all of which can be culture, context and chronology sensitive). Perhaps the existence of different options at the moment is necessary until there's (ever?) any consensus on a satisfying unified technology and sharing model for content. (if this seems confusing, please consider: it's not a technological absolute that use of a peer-to-peer platform means that you have to share your content with everyone; it can be a choice if the technology caters for it)
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  You can control how they are shared, if at all. It’s not a binary choice. I run a self hosted instance and don’t share anything with anyone.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
Double_a_92 5y ago
I wish there was a site that uses videos hosted on Youtube, but with a better, (community curated?) reccomandation algorithm. Kinda like reddit, but the subreddits are topic "channels" that you can watch.
- mistermann 5y ago
  Or even a service that had some sort of ontological tagging of channels and videos, that also reliably notified you when new videos are released on your subscribed channels. Would this be vulnerable to a legal attack from Google?
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    That would be amazing. Why support only Youtube though? It could be useful for many other sources/kinds of content! > Would this be vulnerable to a legal attack from Google? Not really, no. Rehosting the video could be fragile legally, depending on the actual use-case (eg. education/accessibility exceptions to copyright). But a free-software gathering links to existing 3rd party content is just a standard web page, nothing challenging legally. RSS feed readers are not illegal. [0] [0] The notable exception being if you're setting up a centralized for-profit service out of it like Google News is doing. In this specific case they're making profit from content created by 3rd parties, which is definitely a copyright infringement.
contingencies 5y ago
Arduino documentary. https://diode.zone/w/172164ba-9f45-4b3f-8b3c-2af5663f9060 https://diode.zone/w/172164ba-9f45-4b3f-8b3c-2af5663f9060 Very impressed it streams with no buffering here in China. Better than commercial equivalents.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  This depends on the specific instance. Some have better connectivity to certain places than others. What's interesting about Peertube is you are not tied to a single (commercial) CDN to distribute content to your area. If your local community is poorly-served by existing instances, consider setting up a local instances with some likeminded people and setting up replication (part of Peertube admin UI) for other instances/channels you find interesting and would like to be available locally.
tomxor 5y ago
> https://joinpeertube.org/instances#instances-list https://joinpeertube.org/instances#instances-list I love the idea of federated video streaming; I do not love the idea of manually searching each instance - and believe this is why it can never replace something like youtube in it's current form. It would be really good if each instance had a search API to allow more centralised search sites to emerge.
- mlok 5y ago
  Maybe this is what you are looking for ? https://search.joinpeertube.org/ https://search.joinpeertube.org/ Sepia Search : A search engine of PeerTube videos, channels and playlists, Developed by Framasoft
  - tomxor 5y ago
    It is, thanks. Unfortunately the results leave a lot to be desired.
amatecha 5y ago
PeerTube is pretty sweet. If you post videos on YouTube, I'd suggest you also find a PeerTube instance you like, and host your videos there as well. Think of it as a backup for YouTube, for when they nuke your account for some unknown/undisclosed reason[0][1][2], while also participating in (and thereby somewhat supporting) platforms that don't surveil your every granular action. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30401241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30401241 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12163892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12163892
- YaBomm 5y ago
  It would be nice to have a tool that would cross-post
- mattl 5y ago
  Anecdotal but the Peertube instance I was recommended for this purpose closed down.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  - dev_by_day 5y ago
    You also don't need to paint an entire a peer to peer community with the worst actors on it. There are plenty of normal content creators and instances that are not overrun with that content (see https://tilvids.com/videos/trending https://tilvids.com/videos/trending) Also backing up your videos locally will not do anything for helping your fans get access to your content, you will still need to re-host it somewhere. Having it on peer-tube means if your account gets frozen/banned over some bullshit, you can just point your fans to your peer tube channel.
  - _v7gu 5y ago
    So don't upload videos to YouTube at all?
  - 5y ago
agumonkey 5y ago
It's a tiny bit refreshing to not see the same content trends as on youtube. It gets a little more organic vibe. That said, there's also a lot of weirder content too obviously. Alas
wfleming 5y ago
I was intrigued enough to install from F-Droid and poke around. Overall it seems pretty nice, but after swiping back to my home screen I got the first frozen/unresponsive launcher I've had in several years and had to restart my phone. I'm not even sure how an app could accomplish that, but I'm disinclined to call it a coincidence.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  That sounds like it's worth trying to reproduce and sending a bug report. This could be specific to your kernel or system layer so please don't forget to send details about the hardware/software. Also worth noting: Peertube is well-supported by Newpipe (though i don't think P2P streaming is supported), and it's just a web page so you can also open it from your usual browser without downloading an app.
hooby 5y ago
The base concept of "everyone can host their own instance (within a few limitations)" is how most of the internet actually works. HTTPS, Email, DNS, etc. - all of those things allow pretty much everyone to host their own, individual servers. This kind of openness is very central to the success of the internet. Large corporations (Google, Facebook, etc.) consolidating huge amounts of that into single platforms concentrates a lot of power in a single hand, which does create some very real concerns about the internet becoming less and less open. PeerTube is *NOT* a video sharing platform like YouTube is. PeerTube is just a piece of software that allows everyone and their grandma to create their own video sharing platform similar to YouTube. So, basically all those many different PeerTube instances are mini-YouTubes each. Since YouTube is a near-monopoly, it's sort of unavoidable that a lot of PeerTube instances that do crop up, are catering to those who got banned from YouTube - often for very valid reasons. And that's why you end up with a lot of offensive content. That's not a built-in flaw of the software though. It's rather a problem that's caused by the current situation of YouTube being so extremely dominant, that those people who've been banned from YouTube end up basically being the only niche audience that remains untapped.
bigbugbag 5y ago
This might be of interest for people posting on youtube and wondering about peertube: PeerTube Guide for YouTubers Made Easy https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2020/05/peertube-guide-for-youtubers-made-easy.html https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2020/05/peertube-guide-for-youtub...
Hardik_Shah 5y ago
PeerTube has a much stronger privacy and security than any other.

373 points by pmoriarty 5y ago

Sounds like porn to me

I hate to say it but brand, ui, ux really matter in terms of first impressions and overall "love" of a product. I wish they would put more work in branding and ux on their website to make it appear more appealing and professional.

HidyBush 5y ago
This is just the project's web page, the UI and UX of the actual hosted instances is pretty good in my opinion

porkloin 5y ago

I really hope that activitypub and the federated web end up becoming the technologies that "win" out of all the nonsense that is "Web3", but the wildly successful monetization of traditional web platforms and the "different-but-more" monetization of the crypto-obsessed vision of Web3 are nearly impossible for platforms like Peertube and Mastodon to effectively win out against.

gue-ni 5y ago
This has nothing to do with Web3
- Jiejeing 5y ago
  Indeed, as it is an open solution and a working product.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    And actually “web”.
indigochill 5y ago
I suspect the blockchain nonsense (which I refuse to let have the "Web3" title) will win out because there's so much commercial incentive and if there's one thing we've seen from the internet's history, it's that money and commercial interest accelerates adoption even when maybe it shouldn't. I also think federation has the Google conditioning of the mainstream working against it. The mainstream's been conditioned to think of the internet in terms of global platforms. Switching to interacting with smaller nodes is a paradigm shift that I don't believe most users are willing to make, especially given the benefits (like use of personal data and human-scale moderation) don't seem to matter to the majority given the apathy towards Facebook's and Google's business practices. That said, much like gopher still exists in parallel with HTTP, IMO it doesn't really matter which wins because the mainstream using one is not mutually exclusive with some of us using the other.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  > I suspect the blockchain nonsense (which I refuse to let have the "Web3" title) will win out because there's so much commercial incentive and if there's one thing we've seen from the internet's history, it's that money and commercial interest accelerates adoption even when maybe it shouldn't. Blockchain has already “won”: it's now a mainstream investment item, with investment firms bullish. But it also completely failed its goal of decentralization (almost every token holder uses a centralized exchange) and also isn't a competitor to the web at all: you can't connect to a blockchain with a web browser, and every “totally-not-web”3 platform out there is in fact built on top of the Web.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    It's not too late for the bubble to burst. When investors realize they put millions of dollars into a system which can process under 100 requests per second they may have a stroke and the whole thing could collapse like the .net bubble burst in the 90s and took away much of the landscape with it.
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
waffle_maniac 5y ago
Having a stake in a protocol incentivizes adoption and rewards network participation. The average person doesn’t buy stocks. This is a way for them to not be left behind by the elites.
melony 5y ago
Almost every production ready activitypub and federated web framework is under hard copyleft. There is not a single company who will use the technology (unless you are being boycotted by the fediverse like Gab). The fediverse creators explicitly made themselves hostile to innovation. You can't expect to be as popular as WordPress when you demand every user to open source their entire stack.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  It's not every end-user, it's every operator. And that's a good thing: it creates a positive feedback loop where i'm incited to share my patches because others are too. I'm not going to be at a disadvantage sharing code/ideas, because it's the standard within that community and it will benefit everyone equally. Copyleft is is not hostile to innovation, it's the only sustainable path to innovation and was the standard way of developing arts/sciences for millennia before the copyright industry was born and fucked up everything.
armchairhacker 5y ago
I don't think that these p2p technologies are going to win out. They're just objectively inferior to centralized services except in rare cases. But the fact that they're being maintained, and probably will be maintained in the future, is really good. In the event of a serious war or disaster, even locally, they could really come in handy.
jiggunjer 5y ago
I dunno, seems full p2p is going to compete with federation. The former has more technical problems to solve but avoids provider lock-in.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  There is nothing inherent about federation requiring provider lock-in. HTTP has redirect codes, XMPP has <Moved> stanzas, and even better the ZoT protocol (as used in Hubzilla) has crypto-identity over federated services so you can move by simply signing a new identity file mentioning new servers.
elsjaako 5y ago
I doubt they'll ever truly win, but they already work. You don't need to be as big as twitter to be a successful social media platform. I already use mastodon. Not in a "someone needs to be first" sense, but just as a platform I like. Peertube doesn't have the content to be there yet, and the model is a bit more difficult (as hosting video is just more expensive than hosting small bits of text and pictures, even with p2p features). There is some good content on there, but (for me) not enough to make it a social platform like YouTube. Also content discovery still isn't there yet. I recommend fedivideos@mas.to as a good resource to find some nice things.

ZetaZero 5y ago

When I search for a video, it tries to launch a popup window for another domain (sepiasearch.org) which Firefox blocks. Seems confusing for a typical viewer

mdoms 5y ago
And then if you click on one of the search results it will open in yet another popup with yet another weird domain with some oddball TLD like .win which looks even more sketchy.
mlok 5y ago
For information, Sepia Search is the search engine of PeerTube videos, channels and playlists, developed by Framasoft (developer of PeerTube)

ziml77 5y ago

If a video is unpopular, can it just disappear like a torrent that loses seeders? Or is there some mechanism to incentivize peers to hold on to videos that get like one view a month?

HidyBush 5y ago
No, if an instance publishes a video it means that it has to host it as a webseed. The torrent mechanism kicks in only when the video is being accessed by multiple people at the same time
Animats 5y ago
I've wondered about that. I put a video on PeerTube a few months ago.[1] It's a rendering test, of interest only to some people I'm working with. I'm curious to see how long it stays around and whether enough bandwidth is provided for streaming. So far, it's still up, despite very few views. [1] https://video.hardlimit.com/w/qBGD9LF8Ua3T7gLPCkE6vw https://video.hardlimit.com/w/qBGD9LF8Ua3T7gLPCkE6vw
southerntofu 5y ago
It depends on the host's policy. In the peertube model, your server is responsible for hosting the video so unless it closes down there's no reason for it to be unavailable. This has interesting consequences because it means you should not trust a random service provider to host your videos, but rather find a dedicated community on a specific topic, or an existing network (such as a local non-profit host) which is sustainable. There is currently no incentives for seeding and that's a good thing. Seeding (replication) is achieved as a community-to-community service between consenting sysadmins/communities. So if people from kolektiva.media find conf.tube content/concept interesting, the admins can setup say 1TB (or unlimited quota) of replicated content from conf.tube, and both sources will be listed as webseeds when you watch the video on either instance.

fullshark 5y ago

I was looking at this before and went to https://open.tube/ https://open.tube/ to explore the content to see how the community looked. The front page had a video of extreme violence on it and I never returned. Looking now the front page is mostly political flamebait. A real community growing on the back of this technology will require either YouTube screwing up royally or some sort of grassroots effort based on micro payments to content creators (as opposed to ads) I think.

jeroenhd 5y ago
The problem with these decentralised platforms is that the first people to flock to them are the people who have been deplatformed by major services. Some services try to capitalize on that (Gab, Trump's Twitter) while others ignore the problem and end up destined to be abandoned by normal people. Large parts of the Mastodon network are filled with porn and alt-right accounts that got banned from Twitter. Youtube alternatives are quickly filled with conspiracy theories and other content even Youtube doesn't want its algorithm to push. Hell, even centralised services have this problem; DailyMotion is the last real Youtube alternative and these days it's mostly pirated content, from what I can tell. Until some major content providers switch, which they won't, because they'll lose their income, there won't be a transition to free software. I fear the Fediverse came about 10 years too late to be successful.
- zaik 5y ago
  > Mastodon network are filled with porn and alt-right accounts that got banned from Twitter I did not notice this at all, even looking at the federated timeline.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    The alt-right servers tend to get defederated rather quickly. The porn usually doesn't show up, but when it does, it does with a vengeance. There's a _lot_ of it, you usually just don't encounter it.
- Shared404 5y ago

russdpale 5y ago

I look through the listing of peers, and I don't see a single instance which trustworthy enough to devote my time too. For instance, checking the box "education" brings up a completely non sensible list that provides no context in which to make a judgement about the quality or character of the "tube". Also, this seems to have the same problem as mastodon, where I have to create an account for each tube, no thanks. Clicking "English" still brings up non english listings, furthering the difficulty of using the app. Good idea, poor execution.

indigochill 5y ago
> Also, this seems to have the same problem as mastodon, where I have to create an account for each tube, no thanks. Creating an account per node is federation working as intended. The idea is that this is then your identity across the network, the same way that you create an email address with an email provider that then lets you send email to users using other email providers. Each node should then network with other nodes to provide its users access to videos from nodes it trusts (same as Mastodon does - you don't have to be on the same node as a user you follow as long as your node networks with their node). The trust model is centered around your trust of the admin of a particular node, which brings a more human scale to the tech (particularly as compared to something like YouTube). Federation is coming back into vogue particularly now as a reaction to the Facebook/Google problem where a single entity collects all the data about all users of the platform and can unilaterally ban a user with no recourse. In a federated network a node decides what other nodes it federates with and so self-regulates. But email is an example of federated technology everyone uses.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  > Federation is coming back into vogue particularly now as a reaction to the Facebook/Google problem where a single entity collects all the data about all users of the platform and can unilaterally ban a user with no recourse. In a federated network a node decides what other nodes it federates with and so self-regulates. But email is an example of federated technology everyone uses. I swear I read this exact sentence back in 2017 when Mastodon first came out with a splash and it has only gotten less relevant in the five years since.

mdoms 5y ago

I have tried to use PeerTube a number of times (when it comes up on HN, which it does very often). It is absolutely appalling in both usability (confusing, ugly and borderline hostile design) and technical (videos buffer constantly - this is table stakes for hosting video) aspects. I understand the appeal for uploaders, but I will never consider switching to PeerTube as a viewer. I won't even click a link to a PeerTube video because I know in advance it won't play properly.

southerntofu 5y ago
This depends on the specific instance and its traffic to your area. Cross-instance replication is well-supported by Peertube (the software) and if an instance is not loading well from your area you could consider using a local non-profit (or just ask some friends) to host a local peertube instance to replicate the content you find interesting and make it more easily accessible locally.

hannasanarion 5y ago

Putting things on a peer network is the very definition of losing control of your videos. Once something's p2p, can't ever be modified or taken down. It's a great value prop for pirates who want easy access to illegal movies and trolls who want their inflammatory opinions to ruffle feathers forever, but it's a pretty lousy deal for everyone else.

jka 5y ago
Can you see any ways in which uploading your videos to one of a (very) small number of market-leading platforms could be problematic, in contrast?
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  Certainly. But one thing that they definitely do, and that p2p hosting does not, is give people control of their videos, which is what this headline is claiming.
  - jka 5y ago
    Ok, thanks - I'm more ambivalent about the situation: I think it can be unclear, and can depend on people's perspectives regarding privacy and control, and the behaviours of the platforms and software available (all of which can be culture, context and chronology sensitive). Perhaps the existence of different options at the moment is necessary until there's (ever?) any consensus on a satisfying unified technology and sharing model for content. (if this seems confusing, please consider: it's not a technological absolute that use of a peer-to-peer platform means that you have to share your content with everyone; it can be a choice if the technology caters for it)
imwillofficial 5y ago
You can control how they are shared, if at all. It’s not a binary choice. I run a self hosted instance and don’t share anything with anyone.
vorpalhex 5y ago

Double_a_92 5y ago

I wish there was a site that uses videos hosted on Youtube, but with a better, (community curated?) reccomandation algorithm. Kinda like reddit, but the subreddits are topic "channels" that you can watch.

mistermann 5y ago
Or even a service that had some sort of ontological tagging of channels and videos, that also reliably notified you when new videos are released on your subscribed channels. Would this be vulnerable to a legal attack from Google?
- southerntofu 5y ago
  That would be amazing. Why support only Youtube though? It could be useful for many other sources/kinds of content! > Would this be vulnerable to a legal attack from Google? Not really, no. Rehosting the video could be fragile legally, depending on the actual use-case (eg. education/accessibility exceptions to copyright). But a free-software gathering links to existing 3rd party content is just a standard web page, nothing challenging legally. RSS feed readers are not illegal. [0] [0] The notable exception being if you're setting up a centralized for-profit service out of it like Google News is doing. In this specific case they're making profit from content created by 3rd parties, which is definitely a copyright infringement.

contingencies 5y ago

Arduino documentary. https://diode.zone/w/172164ba-9f45-4b3f-8b3c-2af5663f9060 https://diode.zone/w/172164ba-9f45-4b3f-8b3c-2af5663f9060 Very impressed it streams with no buffering here in China. Better than commercial equivalents.

southerntofu 5y ago
This depends on the specific instance. Some have better connectivity to certain places than others. What's interesting about Peertube is you are not tied to a single (commercial) CDN to distribute content to your area. If your local community is poorly-served by existing instances, consider setting up a local instances with some likeminded people and setting up replication (part of Peertube admin UI) for other instances/channels you find interesting and would like to be available locally.

tomxor 5y ago

> https://joinpeertube.org/instances#instances-list https://joinpeertube.org/instances#instances-list I love the idea of federated video streaming; I do not love the idea of manually searching each instance - and believe this is why it can never replace something like youtube in it's current form. It would be really good if each instance had a search API to allow more centralised search sites to emerge.

mlok 5y ago
Maybe this is what you are looking for ? https://search.joinpeertube.org/ https://search.joinpeertube.org/ Sepia Search : A search engine of PeerTube videos, channels and playlists, Developed by Framasoft
- tomxor 5y ago
  It is, thanks. Unfortunately the results leave a lot to be desired.

amatecha 5y ago

PeerTube is pretty sweet. If you post videos on YouTube, I'd suggest you also find a PeerTube instance you like, and host your videos there as well. Think of it as a backup for YouTube, for when they nuke your account for some unknown/undisclosed reason[0][1][2], while also participating in (and thereby somewhat supporting) platforms that don't surveil your every granular action. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30401241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30401241 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12163892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12163892

YaBomm 5y ago
It would be nice to have a tool that would cross-post
mattl 5y ago
Anecdotal but the Peertube instance I was recommended for this purpose closed down.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
- dev_by_day 5y ago
  You also don't need to paint an entire a peer to peer community with the worst actors on it. There are plenty of normal content creators and instances that are not overrun with that content (see https://tilvids.com/videos/trending https://tilvids.com/videos/trending) Also backing up your videos locally will not do anything for helping your fans get access to your content, you will still need to re-host it somewhere. Having it on peer-tube means if your account gets frozen/banned over some bullshit, you can just point your fans to your peer tube channel.
- _v7gu 5y ago
  So don't upload videos to YouTube at all?
- 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago

It's a tiny bit refreshing to not see the same content trends as on youtube. It gets a little more organic vibe. That said, there's also a lot of weirder content too obviously. Alas

wfleming 5y ago

I was intrigued enough to install from F-Droid and poke around. Overall it seems pretty nice, but after swiping back to my home screen I got the first frozen/unresponsive launcher I've had in several years and had to restart my phone. I'm not even sure how an app could accomplish that, but I'm disinclined to call it a coincidence.

southerntofu 5y ago
That sounds like it's worth trying to reproduce and sending a bug report. This could be specific to your kernel or system layer so please don't forget to send details about the hardware/software. Also worth noting: Peertube is well-supported by Newpipe (though i don't think P2P streaming is supported), and it's just a web page so you can also open it from your usual browser without downloading an app.

hooby 5y ago

The base concept of "everyone can host their own instance (within a few limitations)" is how most of the internet actually works. HTTPS, Email, DNS, etc. - all of those things allow pretty much everyone to host their own, individual servers. This kind of openness is very central to the success of the internet. Large corporations (Google, Facebook, etc.) consolidating huge amounts of that into single platforms concentrates a lot of power in a single hand, which does create some very real concerns about the internet becoming less and less open. PeerTube is *NOT* a video sharing platform like YouTube is. PeerTube is just a piece of software that allows everyone and their grandma to create their own video sharing platform similar to YouTube. So, basically all those many different PeerTube instances are mini-YouTubes each. Since YouTube is a near-monopoly, it's sort of unavoidable that a lot of PeerTube instances that do crop up, are catering to those who got banned from YouTube - often for very valid reasons. And that's why you end up with a lot of offensive content. That's not a built-in flaw of the software though. It's rather a problem that's caused by the current situation of YouTube being so extremely dominant, that those people who've been banned from YouTube end up basically being the only niche audience that remains untapped.

bigbugbag 5y ago

This might be of interest for people posting on youtube and wondering about peertube: PeerTube Guide for YouTubers Made Easy https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2020/05/peertube-guide-for-youtubers-made-easy.html https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2020/05/peertube-guide-for-youtub...

Hardik_Shah 5y ago

PeerTube has a much stronger privacy and security than any other.