4 ms·

There's peertube and Pixelfed and someone was working on an activitypub version of Instagram, but really it's like Pixelfed but more ergonomic for video. So th

There's peertube and Pixelfed and someone was working on an activitypub version of Instagram, but really it's like Pixelfed but more ergonomic for video. So the next stage, ideally, would be everyone kinda sharing hosting responsibilities, and if you like a creator, you just follow them. This has the benefit of possibly caching/mirroring all the videos, too. My Fediverse server was chewing through disk, one of the reasons I shut it down - but I was following 1400 news and journalist accounts, plus my ~100 or so gang of idiots. I was nearing 1TB on disk after about 16 months on my essentially single user instance. I exported my follows and moved to an acquaintance's server and imported, the owner doesn't even blink. Who knows what they've got going for storage. Anyhow if you don't need to follow 1500 people, this becomes tractable. If it gets popular, someone will post how to cron the multimedia stuff to compress it as it ages, moving it to cold storage, whatever.

hardwaresofton 1y ago
> There's peertube and Pixelfed and someone was working on an activitypub version of Instagram, but really it's like Pixelfed but more ergonomic for video. > it's like Pixelfed but more ergonomic for video. This is a huge problem IMO. Just like Mastodon/Bluesky (which seems to be working recently) and all these other things, the tech and experience need to be SUPER easy. I mean as-easy-or-easier than YouTube, etc for people to switch en masse. > So the next stage, ideally, would be everyone kinda sharing hosting responsibilities, and if you like a creator, you just follow them. This has the benefit of possibly caching/mirroring all the videos, too. My Fediverse server was chewing through disk, one of the reasons I shut it down - but I was following 1400 news and journalist accounts, plus my ~100 or so gang of idiots. I was nearing 1TB on disk after about 16 months on my essentially single user instance. Yeah the problem is people won't do this/can't be expected to do this, unless it's drop dead easy. Really appreciate hearing about your point on the scaling curve for this tech though, clearly the tech has come really far, that sounds like much more than the average person and "only" 1TB and a single server is quite nice. The best ever approach I have seen to this is PopcornTime. It took the world by storm (and IIRC people still use it/ it still exists in some form, they're just lower profile now), and it worked better the more people used it, because torrents (aka, the technology being a mature, perfect match for the usecase). > I exported my follows and moved to an acquaintance's server and imported, the owner doesn't even blink. Who knows what they've got going for storage. > > Anyhow if you don't need to follow 1500 people, this becomes tractable. If it gets popular, someone will post how to cron the multimedia stuff to compress it as it ages, moving it to cold storage, whatever. I could see this working if that acquaintance got paid for this. Tying money as an incentive to things is sometimes bad/not what you want, but having people think of computers and compute as an asset/tool for them to use is a step in the right direction IMO. I'm not a crypto person (kind of wish I was, 10 years ago), but Filecoin was really interesting originally to me because it just made sense. The marketplace of data storage seems like something that could be easily democratized in this way (no need for the crypto bits, but the ease of payment was a legitimate use IMO).
- genewitch 1y ago
  this isn't to argue! just some clarification because i really don't copyedit/proofread well enough on HN. > I mean as-easy-or-easier than YouTube, etc for people to switch en masse. note: i said peertube but i meant youphptube and the fork, avideo: https://www.turnkeylinux.org/avideo https://www.turnkeylinux.org/avideo Peertube is this, if you want anonymous viewing of videos. I'm not sure about ease of setting up, i don't remember having any issues, which means i can package it for others, but IIRC turnkey linux has peertube as a container, which means any hosting provider that offers TKL it's essentially 4 clicks to launch a peertube server. Fediverse is a little rougher, but i imagine a content creator would be the one that would self-host (or have their own homeserver, but host it with a hosting provider for $50 a month or whatever), and everyone else can go to https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ or whatever and find a homeserver. You don't need to run your own to participate. I was careful to suggest that more people should run their own instances, because i worry that the larger instances will get tired of adding 16TB drive sleds every year. I can't imagine what mastodon.social costs to run! this also ties in with your final point; the acquaintance is part of the value4value^ movement, so they may get donations to offset costs, but i think they have a server room on their property with a couple of racks. maybe they have solar and a sweetheart deal with their ISP - i did at one point, so i also had a server shed. still do, but i used to, too. > Filecoin oh that technology that made buying a used HDD/SSD risky business for a few years? Now, afaik filecoin didn't serve any useful purpose, it was just another "proof of X" where X was "i'm wasting a ton of storage space for this". ipfs et al are the ones that do distributed storage. One thing i would add - unless you absolutely need to, and i mean really need to, never upload high-def to these sort of services. Upload your FHD/QHD/8K videos to the large hosts "for backup", mark them as unlisted, and then link to them for people to archive if they wish. ^https://value4value.info/ https://value4value.info/
  - hardwaresofton 1y ago
    > this isn't to argue! just some clarification because i really don't copyedit/proofread well enough on HN. No worries! Arguments are great if I can learn something. > Peertube is this, if you want anonymous viewing of videos. I'm not sure about ease of setting up, i don't remember having any issues, which means i can package it for others, but IIRC turnkey linux has peertube as a container, which means any hosting provider that offers TKL it's essentially 4 clicks to launch a peertube server. Fediverse is a little rougher, but i imagine a content creator would be the one that would self-host (or have their own homeserver, but host it with a hosting provider for $50 a month or whatever), and everyone else can go to https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ or whatever and find a homeserver. You don't need to run your own to participate. I was careful to suggest that more people should run their own instances, because i worry that the larger instances will get tired of adding 16TB drive sleds every year. I can't imagine what mastodon.social costs to run! this also ties in with your final point; the acquaintance is part of the value4value movement, so they may get donations to offset costs, but i think they have a server room on their property with a couple of racks. maybe they have solar and a sweetheart deal with their ISP - i did at one point, so i also had a server shed. still do, but i used to, too. OK so my thing is that all of this is just too hard. Give me ONE program to run that does everything. I don't think that's impossible either (and no one). If the average user has to hear the word "container" or "linux", it's over. If they have to pay, it's over (probably, unless it's a TINY amount that basically just deters bots or something). Also, most good widely-adopted consumer products NEVER mention anonymity. Maybe security or privacy, but never anonymity. Always love me a little mitch in the comments :) HN hasn't lost it. I guess what we really want here is PopcornTime for PeerTube. Maybe PeerTube is already this and I just don't know about it... the tech would be hard to make work seamlessly but a way to just get the ease of PopcornTime and the interface/product mindedness of YouTube. > oh that technology that made buying a used HDD/SSD risky business for a few years? Now, afaik filecoin didn't serve any useful purpose, it was just another "proof of X" where X was "i'm wasting a ton of storage space for this". ipfs et al are the ones that do distributed storage. But IMO this is a human problem -- it did what it was supposed to do, it made storage valuable. The problem is that when things get valuable, bad actors do things to try and steal that value. That's like thinking computers are bad because people try to steal them once they realize how valuable they are now that people can make money on the internet. I'm not really the right person to defend Filecoin (there were also a few others, I wonder if I'm referring to the right one), but the idea of distributed payment-for-spare-disk-storage (does this fit the value4value movement?) makes a ton of sense to me. IPFS is a technical solution IMO, it stops short of solving the other bits - i.e. motivating the actual money-for-storage exchange that makes the idea sustainable. > One thing i would add - unless you absolutely need to, and i mean really need to, never upload high-def to these sort of services. Upload your FHD/QHD/8K videos to the large hosts "for backup", mark them as unlisted, and then link to them for people to archive if they wish. TIL, thanks!
eptcyka 1y ago
How will federation solve monetisation?
- genewitch 1y ago
  value for value. https://value4value.info/ https://value4value.info/ or ad rolls, who knows. monetization isn't my wheelhouse. podcasts have been doing this since the inception.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    Without even the opportunity to make money, there's very little incentive for creators to spend time and effort making videos for these channels. The reason YouTube is huge is because they invite anybody in to try to get paid for their content, and nobody else does that. This is why most content which should be an article or even a podcast is instead posted as some guy talking in front of the camera on YouTube.
    - genewitch 1y ago
      > ... they invite anybody in to try to get paid ... I have over 100k views on youtube and i've received $0.00 from youtube. This is like "they invite anyone to try and pull the sword from the stone" or something. however look from the other angle: People give their content freely to youtube, a content platform, which benefits youtube, because of this idea that "you might make it big." it's like scratch-offs. Nearly all of the pieces to have the functional equivalent of youtube are there, even for micropayments based on viewership, adrolls, interstitial ads, "patreon-like crowd funding", i was just talking about the boring infra part. I talk about alternatives that exist now, or are alpha/beta stages, because i am hoping that someone, anyone, has the wherewithal to do something about it. I'm not a content creator except in the literal sense, maybe 100 videos on youtube, no cohesion. I have no need to spend time, talent, or treasure on hosting a VOD platform, because it would not benefit me, nor anyone i know personally. I host nextcloud, matrix, pastebin, minecraft, discord bots that remind people to take their medicine and allow them to journal about that and anything else, "wikis", subsonic (quite private). I used to meddle with video hosting, but not directly - syncthing so i could upload drone footage from my cellphone in the field, so that my friend could edit if he wanted before i publish somewhere. read all of that as: "i've proven that this is all possible; further, i know it will scale. I will tell people about this, and someone with the spark can give it to the world, functional and shiny" Note: youtube didn't start out paying uploaders. people uploaded because some people have a need or a desire to have other people look at them. Fame and notoriety can be narcotic. yes i know this is reductive.
washadjeffmad 1y ago
You left out one of the biggest providers of high (and low) quality VOD services: porn. My intuition is that they're only left alone because they very explicitly don't step on any content and delivery trusts' toes. I hadn't really thought about it until I did a crawl for a round of DMCA takedowns for a friend and was surprised by how many platforms apparently use the same few CMSes. It turns out, there are some fantastic, affordable options if you want to start an independent website and VOD service beyond the corporate fray.
lurk2 1y ago
> Pixelfed I suspect a lot of these projects are being held back by bad branding. The first time I heard the term “fediverse,” I assumed it was alluding to Facebook’s Metaverse being a project of the CIA.
- 9283409232 1y ago
  Branding and marketing are so important and engineer minded people spit on them and kick it to the back of the line then wonder why their project isn't popular.
  - lurk2 1y ago
    Documentation, too. I know it’s hard writing instructions with context you already have (think of the “Tell me how to make a peanut butter sandwich” demonstration), but too often I come across projects that I can’t even figure out how to run. This used to be a complete roadblock if the software was old; now you can at least use LLMs to walk you through it. Any project that is based on network effects is doomed to failure if it can’t get this right. I think about this kind of thing a lot (and roll my eyes) when I see people on Hacker News complaining about “non-technicals” while assuming they could learn the skills that they have over the course of a weekend.

hardwaresofton 1y ago

> There's peertube and Pixelfed and someone was working on an activitypub version of Instagram, but really it's like Pixelfed but more ergonomic for video. > it's like Pixelfed but more ergonomic for video. This is a huge problem IMO. Just like Mastodon/Bluesky (which seems to be working recently) and all these other things, the tech and experience need to be SUPER easy. I mean as-easy-or-easier than YouTube, etc for people to switch en masse. > So the next stage, ideally, would be everyone kinda sharing hosting responsibilities, and if you like a creator, you just follow them. This has the benefit of possibly caching/mirroring all the videos, too. My Fediverse server was chewing through disk, one of the reasons I shut it down - but I was following 1400 news and journalist accounts, plus my ~100 or so gang of idiots. I was nearing 1TB on disk after about 16 months on my essentially single user instance. Yeah the problem is people won't do this/can't be expected to do this, unless it's drop dead easy. Really appreciate hearing about your point on the scaling curve for this tech though, clearly the tech has come really far, that sounds like much more than the average person and "only" 1TB and a single server is quite nice. The best ever approach I have seen to this is PopcornTime. It took the world by storm (and IIRC people still use it/ it still exists in some form, they're just lower profile now), and it worked better the more people used it, because torrents (aka, the technology being a mature, perfect match for the usecase). > I exported my follows and moved to an acquaintance's server and imported, the owner doesn't even blink. Who knows what they've got going for storage. > > Anyhow if you don't need to follow 1500 people, this becomes tractable. If it gets popular, someone will post how to cron the multimedia stuff to compress it as it ages, moving it to cold storage, whatever. I could see this working if that acquaintance got paid for this. Tying money as an incentive to things is sometimes bad/not what you want, but having people think of computers and compute as an asset/tool for them to use is a step in the right direction IMO. I'm not a crypto person (kind of wish I was, 10 years ago), but Filecoin was really interesting originally to me because it just made sense. The marketplace of data storage seems like something that could be easily democratized in this way (no need for the crypto bits, but the ease of payment was a legitimate use IMO).

genewitch 1y ago
this isn't to argue! just some clarification because i really don't copyedit/proofread well enough on HN. > I mean as-easy-or-easier than YouTube, etc for people to switch en masse. note: i said peertube but i meant youphptube and the fork, avideo: https://www.turnkeylinux.org/avideo https://www.turnkeylinux.org/avideo Peertube is this, if you want anonymous viewing of videos. I'm not sure about ease of setting up, i don't remember having any issues, which means i can package it for others, but IIRC turnkey linux has peertube as a container, which means any hosting provider that offers TKL it's essentially 4 clicks to launch a peertube server. Fediverse is a little rougher, but i imagine a content creator would be the one that would self-host (or have their own homeserver, but host it with a hosting provider for $50 a month or whatever), and everyone else can go to https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ or whatever and find a homeserver. You don't need to run your own to participate. I was careful to suggest that more people should run their own instances, because i worry that the larger instances will get tired of adding 16TB drive sleds every year. I can't imagine what mastodon.social costs to run! this also ties in with your final point; the acquaintance is part of the value4value^ movement, so they may get donations to offset costs, but i think they have a server room on their property with a couple of racks. maybe they have solar and a sweetheart deal with their ISP - i did at one point, so i also had a server shed. still do, but i used to, too. > Filecoin oh that technology that made buying a used HDD/SSD risky business for a few years? Now, afaik filecoin didn't serve any useful purpose, it was just another "proof of X" where X was "i'm wasting a ton of storage space for this". ipfs et al are the ones that do distributed storage. One thing i would add - unless you absolutely need to, and i mean really need to, never upload high-def to these sort of services. Upload your FHD/QHD/8K videos to the large hosts "for backup", mark them as unlisted, and then link to them for people to archive if they wish. ^https://value4value.info/ https://value4value.info/
- hardwaresofton 1y ago
  > this isn't to argue! just some clarification because i really don't copyedit/proofread well enough on HN. No worries! Arguments are great if I can learn something. > Peertube is this, if you want anonymous viewing of videos. I'm not sure about ease of setting up, i don't remember having any issues, which means i can package it for others, but IIRC turnkey linux has peertube as a container, which means any hosting provider that offers TKL it's essentially 4 clicks to launch a peertube server. Fediverse is a little rougher, but i imagine a content creator would be the one that would self-host (or have their own homeserver, but host it with a hosting provider for $50 a month or whatever), and everyone else can go to https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/ or whatever and find a homeserver. You don't need to run your own to participate. I was careful to suggest that more people should run their own instances, because i worry that the larger instances will get tired of adding 16TB drive sleds every year. I can't imagine what mastodon.social costs to run! this also ties in with your final point; the acquaintance is part of the value4value movement, so they may get donations to offset costs, but i think they have a server room on their property with a couple of racks. maybe they have solar and a sweetheart deal with their ISP - i did at one point, so i also had a server shed. still do, but i used to, too. OK so my thing is that all of this is just too hard. Give me ONE program to run that does everything. I don't think that's impossible either (and no one). If the average user has to hear the word "container" or "linux", it's over. If they have to pay, it's over (probably, unless it's a TINY amount that basically just deters bots or something). Also, most good widely-adopted consumer products NEVER mention anonymity. Maybe security or privacy, but never anonymity. Always love me a little mitch in the comments :) HN hasn't lost it. I guess what we really want here is PopcornTime for PeerTube. Maybe PeerTube is already this and I just don't know about it... the tech would be hard to make work seamlessly but a way to just get the ease of PopcornTime and the interface/product mindedness of YouTube. > oh that technology that made buying a used HDD/SSD risky business for a few years? Now, afaik filecoin didn't serve any useful purpose, it was just another "proof of X" where X was "i'm wasting a ton of storage space for this". ipfs et al are the ones that do distributed storage. But IMO this is a human problem -- it did what it was supposed to do, it made storage valuable. The problem is that when things get valuable, bad actors do things to try and steal that value. That's like thinking computers are bad because people try to steal them once they realize how valuable they are now that people can make money on the internet. I'm not really the right person to defend Filecoin (there were also a few others, I wonder if I'm referring to the right one), but the idea of distributed payment-for-spare-disk-storage (does this fit the value4value movement?) makes a ton of sense to me. IPFS is a technical solution IMO, it stops short of solving the other bits - i.e. motivating the actual money-for-storage exchange that makes the idea sustainable. > One thing i would add - unless you absolutely need to, and i mean really need to, never upload high-def to these sort of services. Upload your FHD/QHD/8K videos to the large hosts "for backup", mark them as unlisted, and then link to them for people to archive if they wish. TIL, thanks!

eptcyka 1y ago

How will federation solve monetisation?

genewitch 1y ago
value for value. https://value4value.info/ https://value4value.info/ or ad rolls, who knows. monetization isn't my wheelhouse. podcasts have been doing this since the inception.
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  Without even the opportunity to make money, there's very little incentive for creators to spend time and effort making videos for these channels. The reason YouTube is huge is because they invite anybody in to try to get paid for their content, and nobody else does that. This is why most content which should be an article or even a podcast is instead posted as some guy talking in front of the camera on YouTube.
  - genewitch 1y ago
    > ... they invite anybody in to try to get paid ... I have over 100k views on youtube and i've received $0.00 from youtube. This is like "they invite anyone to try and pull the sword from the stone" or something. however look from the other angle: People give their content freely to youtube, a content platform, which benefits youtube, because of this idea that "you might make it big." it's like scratch-offs. Nearly all of the pieces to have the functional equivalent of youtube are there, even for micropayments based on viewership, adrolls, interstitial ads, "patreon-like crowd funding", i was just talking about the boring infra part. I talk about alternatives that exist now, or are alpha/beta stages, because i am hoping that someone, anyone, has the wherewithal to do something about it. I'm not a content creator except in the literal sense, maybe 100 videos on youtube, no cohesion. I have no need to spend time, talent, or treasure on hosting a VOD platform, because it would not benefit me, nor anyone i know personally. I host nextcloud, matrix, pastebin, minecraft, discord bots that remind people to take their medicine and allow them to journal about that and anything else, "wikis", subsonic (quite private). I used to meddle with video hosting, but not directly - syncthing so i could upload drone footage from my cellphone in the field, so that my friend could edit if he wanted before i publish somewhere. read all of that as: "i've proven that this is all possible; further, i know it will scale. I will tell people about this, and someone with the spark can give it to the world, functional and shiny" Note: youtube didn't start out paying uploaders. people uploaded because some people have a need or a desire to have other people look at them. Fame and notoriety can be narcotic. yes i know this is reductive.

washadjeffmad 1y ago

You left out one of the biggest providers of high (and low) quality VOD services: porn. My intuition is that they're only left alone because they very explicitly don't step on any content and delivery trusts' toes. I hadn't really thought about it until I did a crawl for a round of DMCA takedowns for a friend and was surprised by how many platforms apparently use the same few CMSes. It turns out, there are some fantastic, affordable options if you want to start an independent website and VOD service beyond the corporate fray.

lurk2 1y ago

> Pixelfed I suspect a lot of these projects are being held back by bad branding. The first time I heard the term “fediverse,” I assumed it was alluding to Facebook’s Metaverse being a project of the CIA.

9283409232 1y ago
Branding and marketing are so important and engineer minded people spit on them and kick it to the back of the line then wonder why their project isn't popular.
- lurk2 1y ago
  Documentation, too. I know it’s hard writing instructions with context you already have (think of the “Tell me how to make a peanut butter sandwich” demonstration), but too often I come across projects that I can’t even figure out how to run. This used to be a complete roadblock if the software was old; now you can at least use LLMs to walk you through it. Any project that is based on network effects is doomed to failure if it can’t get this right. I think about this kind of thing a lot (and roll my eyes) when I see people on Hacker News complaining about “non-technicals” while assuming they could learn the skills that they have over the course of a weekend.