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Let's improve PeerTube – Help us define PeerTube's future roadmap

151 points by raybb 4y ago

riffic 4y ago
Framasoft should run a Peertube-as-a-service and pitch the platform to those who may be Google-averse or have a need to keep content on their own domain name (govs, institional orgs, etc). btw I think this is what Eugen, et al, should be doing with Mastodon gGmbH.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  I like the idea. When you say "keep content on their own domain name," do you mean the physical bits are on my servers as the owner of the content, exposed by my custom domain, or do you mean the bits are hosted on PeerTube's servers and merely exposed using my domain? The distinction is important.
  - riffic 4y ago
    an example of this in action: I live in Los Angeles. I want the city to archive its city council meetings on a video platform. Preferably, these would be available from a subdomain of lacity.gov instead of being available through youtube or another company of that sort (there are all sorts of namespace issues with today's approach). The example here doesn't need to be limited strictly to council meetings either, the city could host all sorts of video on its own instance of the PeerTube site. I know there's currently a "LACityClerk" channel, but I'm sure you could find other Youtube channels concerning the fire department, LAPD, Department of Transportation, City Library, etc: https://www.youtube.com/c/LACityClerk/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/LACityClerk/videos I (as a constituent) don't really care about the underlying hosting. Framasoft, seeing as how they are intimately familiar with how Peertube works, can sell that underlying hosting. The benefit for the city is they can centralize administration and control over this rather than just give all their content to Google.
    - nathanaldensr 4y ago
      Cool. So if I understand you correctly, you effectively want to decouple hosting (where the bits are) from exposure (how I as a user find and view them).
      - tpxl 4y ago
        I think three models are viable: * Youtube-like website where people post videos * A hosted service on your own domain where they host the videos (like the parent was talking about) * A self hosted version where you host the videos and pay for technical support
      - riffic 4y ago
        I made some edits to my parent comment to further explain my pitch and what the benefit to my hypothetical example city would be if they were to be a Framasoft / Peertube customer.
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        The Wordpress equivalent of YouTube, with discovery and federation plug-ins. Anyone can host a Wordpress instance, but you can also pay Automattic to host it for you (your data is also portable and you can move from hosted to self hosted and vice versa).
        riffic 4y ago
        that should probably be my go-to metaphor here. Automattic seems to be doing okay as a professional WordPress hosting shop. Your clarification about the data being portable is definitely key here.
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        You might find these resources of value: https://www.ngi.eu/blog/2021/10/05/internet-trust-accessibility-and-archiving-are-made-easier-by-extending-peertube/ https://www.ngi.eu/blog/2021/10/05/internet-trust-accessibil... https://beeldengeluid.github.io/extending-peertube/ https://beeldengeluid.github.io/extending-peertube/
- Tmpod 4y ago
  Yeah, that would be nice, like how Matrix has EMS and such. Mastodon already has plenty of services like that, such as Masto.Host, but none are "official".
- max51 4y ago
  It would only work while the service is not popular and almost on one uses it. As soon as they attract the attention of copyrights holders, they will be forced to implement the same type of BS we see at youtube. The tech might might be decentralized, but you lose 99% of the benefit of decentralization when you pay a company to host it for you. Whatever good intention they may have, it's all gonna go out the window they the owners are facing a decade behind jail and/or tens of millions of dollars in fines. It's the exact same thing with most platforms that people think will kill youtube. The only reason why they avoided implementing all the crap we hate about youtube is that they are not popular.
  - beepbooptheory 4y ago
    Genuinely curious, if nobody at all is making any advertising money from it, and hosting costs are decentralized (even if that concept is fraught in practice), will copyright holders and/or trolls be as aggressive?
    - riffic 4y ago
      perhaps copyright owners could be more willing to share their content if they had a place they could do so from, and could also monetize to their hearts content. this would effectively cut Google out of the rent-seeking loop.
    - Barrin92 4y ago
      Here in Germany torrent users have always been pretty aggressively pursued. The most common way is for copyright holders to upload their own content, collect IPs, sent out mass infringement notices and collect a few hundred bucks per case. There's an actual industry around it. Unless you're in a jurisdiction where that stuff isn't illegal I think the answer is, yes.
      - leobg 4y ago
        True. It’s disgusting. Do you know whether this kind of thing is still being done, now that we have DSGVO?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
hammyhavoc 4y ago
If there was a way to run ads on your instance then it'd become massive.
- pipeline_peak 4y ago
  Would it really though? they don’t have the interest of average users.
  - ronsor 4y ago
    Ads interest creators, and users are interested in the presence of content from creators they like.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Look at how incentivising running an instance made cryptocurrencies a hot topic. Without some kind of compensation, contributing hardware and bandwidth to an idea like PeerTube means it will remain niche. Likewise, cash for creators means better content and not needing YouTube. None of this should utilize crypto may I add. Stripe and PayPal APIs are very comprehensive, especially for mass payouts, and split payment systems.
    - ronsor 4y ago
      Maybe Stripe, but PayPal sucks more than most people know[1][2] and only exists because it's really convenient when you're not being screwed over. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-13/paypal-sued-for-freezing-customer-accounts-without-explanation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-13/paypal-su... [2] https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.paypal.com https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.paypal.com
      - hammyhavoc 4y ago
        Sure, this happens on every platform owned by a third-party that gets enough users, it is a statistical inevitability. Even crypto wallets aren't immune to being manipulated. See Chivo. FWIW, I've used PayPal since the 90s, I run a biz that uses it, clients use it every day and have used it every day for over a decade without any issues, and I have personally sent several thousand PayPal Invoices over the years. Automated billing also works just fine, far more reliable than charging a card that will eventually expire. Further anecdote: whilst you point to PayPal, I've heard of more people having their bank account frozen for whatever reason, e.g. someone stole their card, suspected fraud etc. We can point to any of these things as a worst case scenario, but likely 99% of the time, it's working as intended. PayPal's support has also been some of the best to deal with when it comes to API queries.
snoopy_telex 4y ago
I think the root issue for PeerTube is that video monetization has not been figured out. Established YouTubers won't switch away from existing revenue streams unless there's parity. New YouTubers will focus on building a business and will go where the money is. Rock and a hard place. That's where I would focus on platform improvements though.
- raybb 4y ago
  I see how this is true for programmatic ads. But do you think the same goes for sponsored videos? If sponsored videos are paid for X number of views why wouldn't that work for peertube?
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    I don't know how Youtube ads work, but I would think it's like Adsense where you can make money long before you are big enough to attract sponsors. Platform-level ads are surely for everyone not big enough to attract sponsors.
  - snoopy_telex 4y ago
    Getting a realistic number of views out of a p2p service is... difficult. It's too easy to fudge. Youtube acts like a neutral party that won't cheat, because it has no reason to. There's no neutral party in peer tube to provide the count.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      > Youtube acts like a neutral party that won't cheat, because it has no reason to. Actually it has a huge reason to, and sometimes large advertising companies do get accused of such cheating. [0] You're right, though, that getting accurate numbers is hard even for companies with large budgets to invest in stopping "fake" clicks, which usually involves all sorts of fingerprinting and surveillance tech. Trying to recreate all that in a transparent and privacy-preserving way, across a network of nodes in different jurisdictions, and with no contractual obligations, is... well, if not impossible, then let's just say it's going to need a lot more blockchain to make it work. ;) [0] https://www.marketing-interactive.com/facebook-sued-for-allegedly-inflating-potential-reach https://www.marketing-interactive.com/facebook-sued-for-alle...
Synaesthesia 4y ago
Yes monetisation and ads would attract more people, but I want a YouTube without ads and without monetisation. It's more than them just being annoying, it changes the entire way people produce content and present it.
- Crash0v3rid3 4y ago
  You want a YouTube like service but no ads/monetization? I'd love to hear about this business plan.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    I think it's perfectly realistic for such a service to exist, but I also think Peertube has the wrong idea. IPFS is a little closer to how I'd prefer videos being hosted, but I also prefer the sharding/peering of a Magnet link. Once someone gets all of that under one umbrella, you'd have a service that is ostensibly both faster than YouTube and more distributed/decentralized. Now, can we convince Mr Beast to join this platform? No, but I don't think most people will notice a discernible dip in quality. Most exploitation-tubers would probably scuttle off to Facebook or Instagram, but I think most of the Patron-supported content creators would buy-in to a well made alternative. Key operand being well made though...
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Well by definition it's not a business. Maybe it's a bunch of friends just having fun doing good tutorials. Maybe it's a non-profit focused on financial literacy videos for the public.
    - upupandup 4y ago
      Who will bear the cost of bandwidth, servers and maintenance? What if it's not just your friends thats mainly using it but millions of people who rely on generous few to keep the lights on? What happens if somebody uses multiple IP addresses to download and drain the bandwidth with other users complaining? Who will handle those tickets?
pipeline_peak 4y ago
What exactly does PeerTube solve? People want to comment and explore libraries of videos. This is just a protocol for independent video sharing platform instances, HTML5 supports video playback. A lot of the instances are poor quality, with flickering buttons. They outright look like the player ui’s that porn sites use…. Is there a way to explore content across all peer tube instances?
- cowtools 4y ago
  Yes, it is federated. You can search, like, make comments from one server to another so long as they are federated together. Here is a pretty good search engine: https://search.joinpeertube.org/ https://search.joinpeertube.org/ I usually try that if i'm trying to watch a video for free and I can't find it anywhere else. There are are servers that just re-upload documentaries and stuff.
  - pipeline_peak 4y ago
    Ok great, I don’t like hoping across 1000 instances, feels messy and unsafe. Like mini 2006 YouTube’s everywhere lol
    - cowtools 4y ago
      You stay on the same site. It fetches the video for you from the other server. For example with this URL: https://kraut.zone/w/aWCVkSQTXKJ1yuR6o8zjDY https://kraut.zone/w/aWCVkSQTXKJ1yuR6o8zjDY Kraut.zone is fetching this guy's vlog from his personal server. But you don't need to visit this random guy's site yourself or run any of his JS in your browser. But if you are really concerned about security you shouldn't even be using JS in the first place. "Le Walled Garden" is not an exception.
  - powerhour 4y ago
    I searched for a common term, "Linux", and of the top 5 results only one worked -- the rest times out before any content (html and all) loaded. On the first page, of the two videos available only one began loading, however playback did not begin for the minute or so I waited. Bummer. This isn't a problem with the search engine, exactly, but it'd be useful if it filtered out unavailable content.
betwixthewires 4y ago
I think peertube needs to stick to the basics: a self hostable tube site server that federates over AP for comments and subscriptions. They've got a great API, they've done fantastic work on live streaming, they have WebRTC implemented to distribute server load, and they've figured out searchability across multiple servers with sepia search. I don't see what needs improvement really. Personally I think the 1 click monetization ad driven model is going to die, I don't think a lot of work should be put towards implementing something like this. People are moving towards a sponsorship model or patron model, and we are seeing all sorts of problems with the 1 click monetization with regard to patent trolling, content policing and the like, it just doesn't work out well. Of course with this transition comes a move away from monopoly on tube sites like what YouTube has, if someone is basing their revenue on patrons or sponsors they don't need to keep all their content on one website, peertube pretty obviously fits into this business environment well. So I think as far as monetization, peertube should focus on tools for creators that help them accurately count their viewership and active subscriptions, and integrations that enable people to hide content behind a paywall for patrons, a plugin system for different payment methods would be fantastic. Besides this I think peertube is pretty much feature complete, although some work could be done on decentralizing search.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  I agree here. I think features that help the (general) patreon model are a winner for adoption. Maybe features that make it easier to host custom peertube instances for content creators.
zackees 4y ago
First off, thanks for making great software. This is state of the art stuff. As I see it, the main blocker on adoption is the extreme difficulty of deploying this giant piece of software. The setup steps is long, complicated and requires implicit knowledge on production level systems, which very few developers have. I've really smashed my head into this trying to get PeerTube to work and I just can't. Other software I deploy is always in a docker container. I don't care how complicated the software solution is, deployment is always a breeze if it's containerized. In fact, deploying docker contains can be considered a "no-code" solution for services like DigitalOcean and Render.com. Docker PeerTube would be an absolute game changer. Right now, PeerTube requires that I have a stable URL which can't change ever. Can this be changed? If it's docker, the actual url may not be necessary at all. Please please please, make a docker deployment the top priority for PeerTube. It will multiply the number of developers that will be able use it and contribute back.
- hsx 4y ago
  You’ll be pleased to find out that PeerTube already has a Docker deployment then! I’ve been running it in Kubernetes with very few issues. The documentation is available here: https://docs.joinpeertube.org/install-docker https://docs.joinpeertube.org/install-docker
haolez 4y ago
How's the censoring story on PeerTube? The good kind of censoring, I mean. If I'm to use a decentralized service which provides me with content, I want to be able to sensor it against terrorist propaganda, child pornography and the likes. Does it offer a solution to that? Genuinely curious.
- agentdrtran 4y ago
  Nope, it's fully decentralized as far as I'm aware. The resolution is "forward the URL to the cops".
  - uncomputation 4y ago
    But what can law enforcement do against decentralized networks with anonymous hosters? With torrents for example, the ISPs go after peers using their service but the content itself will stay up until all peers stop seeding.
    - wmf 4y ago
      AFAIK PeerTube is federated and non-anonymous; it's quite different from P2P.
    - riffic 4y ago
      Good hosting companies don't really like anonymous clients. They know who you are, or they know the name of the person paying the hosting bill.
      - celdon25 4y ago
        Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31023201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31023201
    - agentdrtran 4y ago
      My understanding is that peertube still uses a single host to store the data. It works like P2P only when there are multiple viewers on a video for bandwidth-saving reasons.
hedora 4y ago
I don't understand what PeerTube is for, concretely. (I've read parts of your docs before, and understand what federation is.) I would like to be able to host videos inexpensively, perhaps in an s3 bucket or on a raspberry pi. The free / cheap version needs to scale to at most 2-10 concurrent viewers (a more expensive version that scales indefinitely would be nice for commercial use). It would be optionally password protected in a way that is client side encrypted (probably in a way that is transparent to the end user; such as via a key in a url, that loads a bit of javascript that fetches and decrypts the video). That way, amazon or whoever won't accidentally decide my video is a pirated win95 iso or whatever. Also, the people in my videos won't (necessarily) have their images harvested for bulk survelliance. I should have final say in whether the content is taken down (and own the domain name, in case I want to move to a new cloud provider). It should be trivial to set up. I get the impression that PeerTube meets zero of these requirements.
- cowtools 4y ago
  >I don't understand what PeerTube is for, concretely. (I've read parts of your docs before, and understand what federation is.) I get the impression that it's for personal video sharing. Technically competent users will host their own personal instances and host instances for their communities. These instances are federated into larger social networks where users can interact across instances. >I would like to be able to host videos inexpensively, perhaps in an s3 bucket or on a raspberry pi. The free / cheap version needs to scale to at most 2-10 concurrent viewers (a more expensive version that scales indefinitely would be nice for commercial use). I do not think something proprietary like an s3 bucket would be compatible with Peertube, but I have not maintained an instance. The system works with webtorrent (a version of BitTorrent that runs over WebRTC), so it depends whether the concurrent viewers are all watching the same video or not (because then they will seed the videos to each other using webtorrent). >It would be optionally password protected in a way that is client side encrypted (probably in a way that is transparent to the end user; such as via a key in a url, that loads a bit of javascript that fetches and decrypts the video). That way, amazon or whoever won't accidentally decide my video is a pirated win95 iso or whatever. The fact that your VPS host is untrustworthy and temperamental is not peertube's fault. Consider a better VPS provider perhaps. >I should have final say in whether the content is taken down (and own the domain name, in case I want to move to a new cloud provider). >It should be trivial to set up. These two things are in conflict. Merely getting ahold of a domain name is non-trivial, although I suppose you could operate it as a Tor onion service or something on the other end of zooko's triangle.
lxe 4y ago
Is there a "recommended" feed of peertube videos where I can discover content? Or a upvote-like system? Or something curated? Where do I find trending and interesting content on the ecosystem?
- cowtools 4y ago
  Choose a homeserver you like and go to the discover or trending page. here are some big instances to try (many are european, you may want to choose an english language one): https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?sort=-totalInstanceFollowing https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?sort=-totalInst... A lot of my friends use diode.zone . That is like a more electronics-focused instance. There are views and likes, but mostly I just check my subscriptions. The popularity of a video depends a lot on traffic from external websites as well as how many instances federate it.
- elsjaako 4y ago
  With the federated model, peertube isn't one site, and so in the model there isn't a way to get a list of all the content. It would be like getting the recommended list for WordPress. That said, I like this account for video tips: https://mas.to/@FediVideos https://mas.to/@FediVideos I believe that there are some services that collect videos for indexing etc. but I don't have experience with them.
TheDesolate0 4y ago
LOL. No.
Yaina 4y ago
Went to their list of instances, first one for me was one that hosts far-right political videos... oof Maybe they should curate that list.
- vfclists 4y ago
  "Far-right" - Opinions that differ from leftist flavoured corporate agendas.
KronisLV 4y ago
Using PeerTube for hosting VODs from my past Twitch streams, gaming videos and programming videos. Can't really speak much for running it at scale, since for now I just link the occasional video to friends, but I have to say that overall it's a great project! It's especially nice that the videos are optimized when you upload them and thus seeking them is way better versus just uploading an .mp4 to Nextcloud and linking that. You can even configure how many videos and threads you'd like to allot to processing videos, so even my old box with a 200GE CPU in it runs great (even if slowly), without the actual front end breaking or anything. Though of course I assume that all of the federation features and whatnot are great, too. Here's hoping that the project has a bright future ahead of it! My personal pet peeve in regards to dealing with video production would have to be how WebM-VP8/Vorbis (libre) feels worse than MP4-H264/AAC for encoding, at least based on the speed and file sizes. Maybe using kdenlive isn't the best integration of these, but I think it uses ffmpeg under the hood and therefore should be a vaguely accurate representation of both of them. Examples of config (quality settings for video/audio, kdenlive options output, though I'm not sure about the full command it uses internally): H264/AAC with 30/192: f=mp4 movflags=+faststart vcodec=libx264 progressive=1 g=15 bf=2 crf=%quality acodec=aac ab=%audiobitrate+'k' WebM-VP8/Vorbis with 30/6: f=webm vcodec=libvpx acodec=libvorbis crf=%quality vb=0 quality=good aq=%audioquality max-intra-rate=1000 Though that's not related to PeerTube in particular but rather the formats/encoders themselves, somehow the libre one doesn't hold up as well. But hey, it's nice to at least have options.
IYasha 4y ago
I really love your idea, but... Here's my use case. Tried PT a few times and just couldn't. Here's why: 1) most of my computers are slow and while browser/js-based programs are a blessing for some, for me it's a nightmare, 2) most of the time my internet is slow and limited (paid traffic). So, while I can somehow download youtube vids at low resolutions, there's no way I could upload stream simultaneously. :( Anyway, good luck.

151 points by raybb 4y ago

Framasoft should run a Peertube-as-a-service and pitch the platform to those who may be Google-averse or have a need to keep content on their own domain name (govs, institional orgs, etc). btw I think this is what Eugen, et al, should be doing with Mastodon gGmbH.

nathanaldensr 4y ago
I like the idea. When you say "keep content on their own domain name," do you mean the physical bits are on my servers as the owner of the content, exposed by my custom domain, or do you mean the bits are hosted on PeerTube's servers and merely exposed using my domain? The distinction is important.
- riffic 4y ago
  an example of this in action: I live in Los Angeles. I want the city to archive its city council meetings on a video platform. Preferably, these would be available from a subdomain of lacity.gov instead of being available through youtube or another company of that sort (there are all sorts of namespace issues with today's approach). The example here doesn't need to be limited strictly to council meetings either, the city could host all sorts of video on its own instance of the PeerTube site. I know there's currently a "LACityClerk" channel, but I'm sure you could find other Youtube channels concerning the fire department, LAPD, Department of Transportation, City Library, etc: https://www.youtube.com/c/LACityClerk/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/LACityClerk/videos I (as a constituent) don't really care about the underlying hosting. Framasoft, seeing as how they are intimately familiar with how Peertube works, can sell that underlying hosting. The benefit for the city is they can centralize administration and control over this rather than just give all their content to Google.
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    Cool. So if I understand you correctly, you effectively want to decouple hosting (where the bits are) from exposure (how I as a user find and view them).
    - tpxl 4y ago
      I think three models are viable: * Youtube-like website where people post videos * A hosted service on your own domain where they host the videos (like the parent was talking about) * A self hosted version where you host the videos and pay for technical support
    - riffic 4y ago
      I made some edits to my parent comment to further explain my pitch and what the benefit to my hypothetical example city would be if they were to be a Framasoft / Peertube customer.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      The Wordpress equivalent of YouTube, with discovery and federation plug-ins. Anyone can host a Wordpress instance, but you can also pay Automattic to host it for you (your data is also portable and you can move from hosted to self hosted and vice versa).
      - riffic 4y ago
        that should probably be my go-to metaphor here. Automattic seems to be doing okay as a professional WordPress hosting shop. Your clarification about the data being portable is definitely key here.
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        You might find these resources of value: https://www.ngi.eu/blog/2021/10/05/internet-trust-accessibility-and-archiving-are-made-easier-by-extending-peertube/ https://www.ngi.eu/blog/2021/10/05/internet-trust-accessibil... https://beeldengeluid.github.io/extending-peertube/ https://beeldengeluid.github.io/extending-peertube/
Tmpod 4y ago
Yeah, that would be nice, like how Matrix has EMS and such. Mastodon already has plenty of services like that, such as Masto.Host, but none are "official".
max51 4y ago
It would only work while the service is not popular and almost on one uses it. As soon as they attract the attention of copyrights holders, they will be forced to implement the same type of BS we see at youtube. The tech might might be decentralized, but you lose 99% of the benefit of decentralization when you pay a company to host it for you. Whatever good intention they may have, it's all gonna go out the window they the owners are facing a decade behind jail and/or tens of millions of dollars in fines. It's the exact same thing with most platforms that people think will kill youtube. The only reason why they avoided implementing all the crap we hate about youtube is that they are not popular.
- beepbooptheory 4y ago
  Genuinely curious, if nobody at all is making any advertising money from it, and hosting costs are decentralized (even if that concept is fraught in practice), will copyright holders and/or trolls be as aggressive?
  - riffic 4y ago
    perhaps copyright owners could be more willing to share their content if they had a place they could do so from, and could also monetize to their hearts content. this would effectively cut Google out of the rent-seeking loop.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    Here in Germany torrent users have always been pretty aggressively pursued. The most common way is for copyright holders to upload their own content, collect IPs, sent out mass infringement notices and collect a few hundred bucks per case. There's an actual industry around it. Unless you're in a jurisdiction where that stuff isn't illegal I think the answer is, yes.
    - leobg 4y ago
      True. It’s disgusting. Do you know whether this kind of thing is still being done, now that we have DSGVO?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

hammyhavoc 4y ago

If there was a way to run ads on your instance then it'd become massive.

pipeline_peak 4y ago
Would it really though? they don’t have the interest of average users.
- ronsor 4y ago
  Ads interest creators, and users are interested in the presence of content from creators they like.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Look at how incentivising running an instance made cryptocurrencies a hot topic. Without some kind of compensation, contributing hardware and bandwidth to an idea like PeerTube means it will remain niche. Likewise, cash for creators means better content and not needing YouTube. None of this should utilize crypto may I add. Stripe and PayPal APIs are very comprehensive, especially for mass payouts, and split payment systems.
  - ronsor 4y ago
    Maybe Stripe, but PayPal sucks more than most people know[1][2] and only exists because it's really convenient when you're not being screwed over. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-13/paypal-sued-for-freezing-customer-accounts-without-explanation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-13/paypal-su... [2] https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.paypal.com https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.paypal.com
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      Sure, this happens on every platform owned by a third-party that gets enough users, it is a statistical inevitability. Even crypto wallets aren't immune to being manipulated. See Chivo. FWIW, I've used PayPal since the 90s, I run a biz that uses it, clients use it every day and have used it every day for over a decade without any issues, and I have personally sent several thousand PayPal Invoices over the years. Automated billing also works just fine, far more reliable than charging a card that will eventually expire. Further anecdote: whilst you point to PayPal, I've heard of more people having their bank account frozen for whatever reason, e.g. someone stole their card, suspected fraud etc. We can point to any of these things as a worst case scenario, but likely 99% of the time, it's working as intended. PayPal's support has also been some of the best to deal with when it comes to API queries.

snoopy_telex 4y ago

I think the root issue for PeerTube is that video monetization has not been figured out. Established YouTubers won't switch away from existing revenue streams unless there's parity. New YouTubers will focus on building a business and will go where the money is. Rock and a hard place. That's where I would focus on platform improvements though.

raybb 4y ago
I see how this is true for programmatic ads. But do you think the same goes for sponsored videos? If sponsored videos are paid for X number of views why wouldn't that work for peertube?
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  I don't know how Youtube ads work, but I would think it's like Adsense where you can make money long before you are big enough to attract sponsors. Platform-level ads are surely for everyone not big enough to attract sponsors.
- snoopy_telex 4y ago
  Getting a realistic number of views out of a p2p service is... difficult. It's too easy to fudge. Youtube acts like a neutral party that won't cheat, because it has no reason to. There's no neutral party in peer tube to provide the count.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    > Youtube acts like a neutral party that won't cheat, because it has no reason to. Actually it has a huge reason to, and sometimes large advertising companies do get accused of such cheating. [0] You're right, though, that getting accurate numbers is hard even for companies with large budgets to invest in stopping "fake" clicks, which usually involves all sorts of fingerprinting and surveillance tech. Trying to recreate all that in a transparent and privacy-preserving way, across a network of nodes in different jurisdictions, and with no contractual obligations, is... well, if not impossible, then let's just say it's going to need a lot more blockchain to make it work. ;) [0] https://www.marketing-interactive.com/facebook-sued-for-allegedly-inflating-potential-reach https://www.marketing-interactive.com/facebook-sued-for-alle...

Synaesthesia 4y ago

Yes monetisation and ads would attract more people, but I want a YouTube without ads and without monetisation. It's more than them just being annoying, it changes the entire way people produce content and present it.

Crash0v3rid3 4y ago
You want a YouTube like service but no ads/monetization? I'd love to hear about this business plan.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I think it's perfectly realistic for such a service to exist, but I also think Peertube has the wrong idea. IPFS is a little closer to how I'd prefer videos being hosted, but I also prefer the sharding/peering of a Magnet link. Once someone gets all of that under one umbrella, you'd have a service that is ostensibly both faster than YouTube and more distributed/decentralized. Now, can we convince Mr Beast to join this platform? No, but I don't think most people will notice a discernible dip in quality. Most exploitation-tubers would probably scuttle off to Facebook or Instagram, but I think most of the Patron-supported content creators would buy-in to a well made alternative. Key operand being well made though...
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Well by definition it's not a business. Maybe it's a bunch of friends just having fun doing good tutorials. Maybe it's a non-profit focused on financial literacy videos for the public.
  - upupandup 4y ago
    Who will bear the cost of bandwidth, servers and maintenance? What if it's not just your friends thats mainly using it but millions of people who rely on generous few to keep the lights on? What happens if somebody uses multiple IP addresses to download and drain the bandwidth with other users complaining? Who will handle those tickets?

pipeline_peak 4y ago

What exactly does PeerTube solve? People want to comment and explore libraries of videos. This is just a protocol for independent video sharing platform instances, HTML5 supports video playback. A lot of the instances are poor quality, with flickering buttons. They outright look like the player ui’s that porn sites use…. Is there a way to explore content across all peer tube instances?

cowtools 4y ago
Yes, it is federated. You can search, like, make comments from one server to another so long as they are federated together. Here is a pretty good search engine: https://search.joinpeertube.org/ https://search.joinpeertube.org/ I usually try that if i'm trying to watch a video for free and I can't find it anywhere else. There are are servers that just re-upload documentaries and stuff.
- pipeline_peak 4y ago
  Ok great, I don’t like hoping across 1000 instances, feels messy and unsafe. Like mini 2006 YouTube’s everywhere lol
  - cowtools 4y ago
    You stay on the same site. It fetches the video for you from the other server. For example with this URL: https://kraut.zone/w/aWCVkSQTXKJ1yuR6o8zjDY https://kraut.zone/w/aWCVkSQTXKJ1yuR6o8zjDY Kraut.zone is fetching this guy's vlog from his personal server. But you don't need to visit this random guy's site yourself or run any of his JS in your browser. But if you are really concerned about security you shouldn't even be using JS in the first place. "Le Walled Garden" is not an exception.
- powerhour 4y ago
  I searched for a common term, "Linux", and of the top 5 results only one worked -- the rest times out before any content (html and all) loaded. On the first page, of the two videos available only one began loading, however playback did not begin for the minute or so I waited. Bummer. This isn't a problem with the search engine, exactly, but it'd be useful if it filtered out unavailable content.

betwixthewires 4y ago

I think peertube needs to stick to the basics: a self hostable tube site server that federates over AP for comments and subscriptions. They've got a great API, they've done fantastic work on live streaming, they have WebRTC implemented to distribute server load, and they've figured out searchability across multiple servers with sepia search. I don't see what needs improvement really. Personally I think the 1 click monetization ad driven model is going to die, I don't think a lot of work should be put towards implementing something like this. People are moving towards a sponsorship model or patron model, and we are seeing all sorts of problems with the 1 click monetization with regard to patent trolling, content policing and the like, it just doesn't work out well. Of course with this transition comes a move away from monopoly on tube sites like what YouTube has, if someone is basing their revenue on patrons or sponsors they don't need to keep all their content on one website, peertube pretty obviously fits into this business environment well. So I think as far as monetization, peertube should focus on tools for creators that help them accurately count their viewership and active subscriptions, and integrations that enable people to hide content behind a paywall for patrons, a plugin system for different payment methods would be fantastic. Besides this I think peertube is pretty much feature complete, although some work could be done on decentralizing search.

vorpalhex 4y ago
I agree here. I think features that help the (general) patreon model are a winner for adoption. Maybe features that make it easier to host custom peertube instances for content creators.

zackees 4y ago

First off, thanks for making great software. This is state of the art stuff. As I see it, the main blocker on adoption is the extreme difficulty of deploying this giant piece of software. The setup steps is long, complicated and requires implicit knowledge on production level systems, which very few developers have. I've really smashed my head into this trying to get PeerTube to work and I just can't. Other software I deploy is always in a docker container. I don't care how complicated the software solution is, deployment is always a breeze if it's containerized. In fact, deploying docker contains can be considered a "no-code" solution for services like DigitalOcean and Render.com. Docker PeerTube would be an absolute game changer. Right now, PeerTube requires that I have a stable URL which can't change ever. Can this be changed? If it's docker, the actual url may not be necessary at all. Please please please, make a docker deployment the top priority for PeerTube. It will multiply the number of developers that will be able use it and contribute back.

hsx 4y ago
You’ll be pleased to find out that PeerTube already has a Docker deployment then! I’ve been running it in Kubernetes with very few issues. The documentation is available here: https://docs.joinpeertube.org/install-docker https://docs.joinpeertube.org/install-docker

haolez 4y ago

How's the censoring story on PeerTube? The good kind of censoring, I mean. If I'm to use a decentralized service which provides me with content, I want to be able to sensor it against terrorist propaganda, child pornography and the likes. Does it offer a solution to that? Genuinely curious.

agentdrtran 4y ago
Nope, it's fully decentralized as far as I'm aware. The resolution is "forward the URL to the cops".
- uncomputation 4y ago
  But what can law enforcement do against decentralized networks with anonymous hosters? With torrents for example, the ISPs go after peers using their service but the content itself will stay up until all peers stop seeding.
  - wmf 4y ago
    AFAIK PeerTube is federated and non-anonymous; it's quite different from P2P.
  - riffic 4y ago
    Good hosting companies don't really like anonymous clients. They know who you are, or they know the name of the person paying the hosting bill.
    - celdon25 4y ago
      Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31023201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31023201
  - agentdrtran 4y ago
    My understanding is that peertube still uses a single host to store the data. It works like P2P only when there are multiple viewers on a video for bandwidth-saving reasons.

hedora 4y ago

I don't understand what PeerTube is for, concretely. (I've read parts of your docs before, and understand what federation is.) I would like to be able to host videos inexpensively, perhaps in an s3 bucket or on a raspberry pi. The free / cheap version needs to scale to at most 2-10 concurrent viewers (a more expensive version that scales indefinitely would be nice for commercial use). It would be optionally password protected in a way that is client side encrypted (probably in a way that is transparent to the end user; such as via a key in a url, that loads a bit of javascript that fetches and decrypts the video). That way, amazon or whoever won't accidentally decide my video is a pirated win95 iso or whatever. Also, the people in my videos won't (necessarily) have their images harvested for bulk survelliance. I should have final say in whether the content is taken down (and own the domain name, in case I want to move to a new cloud provider). It should be trivial to set up. I get the impression that PeerTube meets zero of these requirements.

cowtools 4y ago
>I don't understand what PeerTube is for, concretely. (I've read parts of your docs before, and understand what federation is.) I get the impression that it's for personal video sharing. Technically competent users will host their own personal instances and host instances for their communities. These instances are federated into larger social networks where users can interact across instances. >I would like to be able to host videos inexpensively, perhaps in an s3 bucket or on a raspberry pi. The free / cheap version needs to scale to at most 2-10 concurrent viewers (a more expensive version that scales indefinitely would be nice for commercial use). I do not think something proprietary like an s3 bucket would be compatible with Peertube, but I have not maintained an instance. The system works with webtorrent (a version of BitTorrent that runs over WebRTC), so it depends whether the concurrent viewers are all watching the same video or not (because then they will seed the videos to each other using webtorrent). >It would be optionally password protected in a way that is client side encrypted (probably in a way that is transparent to the end user; such as via a key in a url, that loads a bit of javascript that fetches and decrypts the video). That way, amazon or whoever won't accidentally decide my video is a pirated win95 iso or whatever. The fact that your VPS host is untrustworthy and temperamental is not peertube's fault. Consider a better VPS provider perhaps. >I should have final say in whether the content is taken down (and own the domain name, in case I want to move to a new cloud provider). >It should be trivial to set up. These two things are in conflict. Merely getting ahold of a domain name is non-trivial, although I suppose you could operate it as a Tor onion service or something on the other end of zooko's triangle.

lxe 4y ago

Is there a "recommended" feed of peertube videos where I can discover content? Or a upvote-like system? Or something curated? Where do I find trending and interesting content on the ecosystem?

cowtools 4y ago
Choose a homeserver you like and go to the discover or trending page. here are some big instances to try (many are european, you may want to choose an english language one): https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?sort=-totalInstanceFollowing https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?sort=-totalInst... A lot of my friends use diode.zone . That is like a more electronics-focused instance. There are views and likes, but mostly I just check my subscriptions. The popularity of a video depends a lot on traffic from external websites as well as how many instances federate it.
elsjaako 4y ago
With the federated model, peertube isn't one site, and so in the model there isn't a way to get a list of all the content. It would be like getting the recommended list for WordPress. That said, I like this account for video tips: https://mas.to/@FediVideos https://mas.to/@FediVideos I believe that there are some services that collect videos for indexing etc. but I don't have experience with them.

TheDesolate0 4y ago

LOL. No.

Yaina 4y ago

Went to their list of instances, first one for me was one that hosts far-right political videos... oof Maybe they should curate that list.

vfclists 4y ago
"Far-right" - Opinions that differ from leftist flavoured corporate agendas.

KronisLV 4y ago

Using PeerTube for hosting VODs from my past Twitch streams, gaming videos and programming videos. Can't really speak much for running it at scale, since for now I just link the occasional video to friends, but I have to say that overall it's a great project! It's especially nice that the videos are optimized when you upload them and thus seeking them is way better versus just uploading an .mp4 to Nextcloud and linking that. You can even configure how many videos and threads you'd like to allot to processing videos, so even my old box with a 200GE CPU in it runs great (even if slowly), without the actual front end breaking or anything. Though of course I assume that all of the federation features and whatnot are great, too. Here's hoping that the project has a bright future ahead of it! My personal pet peeve in regards to dealing with video production would have to be how WebM-VP8/Vorbis (libre) feels worse than MP4-H264/AAC for encoding, at least based on the speed and file sizes. Maybe using kdenlive isn't the best integration of these, but I think it uses ffmpeg under the hood and therefore should be a vaguely accurate representation of both of them. Examples of config (quality settings for video/audio, kdenlive options output, though I'm not sure about the full command it uses internally): H264/AAC with 30/192: f=mp4 movflags=+faststart vcodec=libx264 progressive=1 g=15 bf=2 crf=%quality acodec=aac ab=%audiobitrate+'k' WebM-VP8/Vorbis with 30/6: f=webm vcodec=libvpx acodec=libvorbis crf=%quality vb=0 quality=good aq=%audioquality max-intra-rate=1000 Though that's not related to PeerTube in particular but rather the formats/encoders themselves, somehow the libre one doesn't hold up as well. But hey, it's nice to at least have options.

IYasha 4y ago

I really love your idea, but... Here's my use case. Tried PT a few times and just couldn't. Here's why: 1) most of my computers are slow and while browser/js-based programs are a blessing for some, for me it's a nightmare, 2) most of the time my internet is slow and limited (paid traffic). So, while I can somehow download youtube vids at low resolutions, there's no way I could upload stream simultaneously. :( Anyway, good luck.