4 ms·

That's why we have Peertube and your personal (not hosted by a corp) website. It's amazing how people forgot to use the internet in exchange for "easier" UX.

by isodev 1y ago

the_af 1y ago
I don't think it's about UX at this point. It's more about critical mass. Unfortunately, YouTube is where the videos and audience are... yes, it's a Catch-22 situation.
- gloxkiqcza 1y ago
  In case of YouTube I wouldn’t be so sure. Yes, it’s the central hub for making your name but many YouTubers came up with their own platforms for exclusive content to have more control over their business once they got big. PeerTube is inline with that idea and because of that might be promoted by big creators soon.
  - Lionga 1y ago
    This will be the year of PeerTube on the Desktop!!!
- Bender 1y ago
  Youtube is certainly useful for discovery and monetization but if the goal is to share a video that may be censored I would suggest everyone should upload to {n+2} locations at a minimum and link to both YT and the self hosted mirrors from a blog after linking to the blog from YT. It's easier than friends of YT would suggest.
konart 1y ago
>It's amazing how people forgot to use the internet in exchange for "easier" UX. What's so amazing here? This a normal and expected human behaviour. >forgot to use the internet What does this even mean in this context?
- Aldipower 1y ago
  > What does this even mean in this context? Look, you've forgotten it otherwise you wouldn't ask this question.
  - konart 1y ago
    No, I'm just trying to say that the whole "you are using in right/wrong" is bs. What parent comment implies (at least how a read it) is just your good old gatekeeping.
- Jean-Philipe 1y ago
  From my experience, it used to be quite normal for a lot of my non-technical peers to have a personal webpage on the internet with frontpage express, wordpress or geocities. Nowadays, even a lot of businesses don't have a website, but instead an Instagram or Facebook entry. YMMV The internet is still decentralized today.
  - konart 1y ago
    Idk, most people I know used services like wordpress.com (so not self hosted), livejournal (and its local alternatives) etc. This if we are talking about second half of 00s. Before this? Most people barely have internet access at home. And things like BBS (for example) were for techies only with very few exceptions. Maybe it was quite different in the US for example.
    - queenkjuul 1y ago
      I don't think so, i was very young but my family didn't have Internet whatsoever until 2001 and didn't have broadband until 2005 (in the US). I certainly didn't know anyone self hosting anything (even my most tech savvy older relatives), but by 2005 we were all on Myspace.
    - Jean-Philipe 1y ago
      Yeah sure wordpress.com or geocities are not self hosted - but you had much more control over your content. People would just link to other blogs they like or comment on their guestbook / comment page. People would host php-forums. In each friends circle (school or hobby groups) there was always at least one kid who would be tech enough to host some php app on a shared hosting, and people would actually use it. But just self-hosting was not really my point, it was the degree of control that used to be common. I'd argue even myspace was much better than what we have today.
hliyan 1y ago
I wonder if the future should simply be a cloud version of a personal computer. Rather than subscribing to a lot of SaaS where your data distributed across various platforms, you "purchase" a cloud computer (could be a tiny SOC + disk, or a VM), install software on it (licensed, not subscription based), and store all your data on it, as good old-fashioned files only you and your programs can access. Including your video library, part of which you can choose to expose to the outside world through a public IP. When your cloud PC needs more memory or CPU, you upgrade, just like you do your physical device.
- krige 1y ago
  And then the company goes under, or decides your variant of the service is not worth maintaining, or that there is potential for enshittification. All your data, gone. And it WILL happen.
  - hliyan 1y ago
    If by service, you mean the cloud machine -- I mean a plain vanilla machine running an OS of your choice (e.g. Windows or Ubuntu). Switching to another service provider means taking your file backups + reinstalling your software on the new machine. Developers already know how to do this with EC2s, Droplets, Linodes, Azure VMs etc. The process just needs to be more average-person-friendly.
    - rootnod3 1y ago
      And where then is your backup? In the same cloud? The one that just tried to rip your data sovereignity away from you? The average person still uses the same password for EVERYTHING, despite say iOS and Android making it easy as pie to just go "generate passwords for me". Telling an average person to have a 3-2-1 backup AND run stuff in the cloud that they will 100% lose the password for is not a battle I see to be won in the near future.
- kakacik 1y ago
  I certainly hope it shouldn't look like that, that sounds horrible on many, in fact all levels.
marcuskane2 1y ago
> your personal (not hosted by a corp) website I'm not sure that's enough. A few years ago there were some set of websites that wanted less censorship than the main corporate sites (or at least, a different set of censorship rules), I forget all their names now - voat, rumble, gab, parler, etc and people who didn't like the content they saw there just went upstream to cloud providers, app stores, registrars, payment processors, CDNs, ISPs and anywhere else in order to shut them down, cut them off or prevent access. Tons of sites that failed to perfectly comply with American media conglomerate's interpretation of copyright have been forced offline, had their domain names seized, etc. There was a period of time where the MPAA and RIAA were routinely suing random teenagers and grandparents for life-destroying sums of money because they used Napster to share a song they liked with a friend. I think to maintain any sort of real open web, we're going to need some sort of new Tor network that can support billions of users anonymously accessing information which can't be deplatformed and can't result in people getting arrested, losing their jobs, their visas or their funding for saying things that the people in power don't want said.
- fluoridation 1y ago
  >I think to maintain any sort of real open web, we're going to need some sort of new Tor network that can support billions of users anonymously accessing information which can't be deplatformed That already exists. They're called onion sites. What we really need is something that performs about as well as the current Internet, but is stronger against deplatforming: decentralized DNS. It doesn't even need to give memorable names like DNS does, it just needs to be a second, stable addressing layer on top of IP so clients can always find the server.
  - trinsic2 1y ago
    Decentralization just puts people that run servers as middle men to further impose a censorship agenda with ActivityPub. Whatever it is it needs to be distributed like BitTorrent.
    - fluoridation 1y ago
bjourne 1y ago
Does having your personal website even matter when the agents of censorship can just request that search engines delist your urls? Or pay for tons of ads so that your site's ranking drops to the second or third page for whatever keywords it happens to match on. And if they still get sizeable traffic, they can just ask your hosting provider to cancel your account. No need to burn the books when you can just remove them.
tamimio 1y ago
And you think it will stop here? Nope, next AWS or whatever cloud where you host your clone will terminate your service, then you go and rent a bare-metal, same thing later, then you go and host it on your own hardware, the CDN will terminate it! Oh you managed to find a mediocre CDN? The ISP next! As long as there's no regulation protecting your rights, whoever has the biggest share in xyz will be in charge.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
We're in an attention economy. You don't post on Youtube for preservation, you post there to reach an audience so people know what's going on. If you're not the POTUS you don't have the luxury to use an alternative site and not be utterly ignored.

That's why we have Peertube and your personal (not hosted by a corp) website. It's amazing how people forgot to use the internet in exchange for "easier" UX.

by isodev 1y ago

That's why we have Peertube and your personal (not hosted by a corp) website. It's amazing how people forgot to use the internet in exchange for "easier" UX.

the_af 1y ago

I don't think it's about UX at this point. It's more about critical mass. Unfortunately, YouTube is where the videos and audience are... yes, it's a Catch-22 situation.

gloxkiqcza 1y ago
In case of YouTube I wouldn’t be so sure. Yes, it’s the central hub for making your name but many YouTubers came up with their own platforms for exclusive content to have more control over their business once they got big. PeerTube is inline with that idea and because of that might be promoted by big creators soon.
- Lionga 1y ago
  This will be the year of PeerTube on the Desktop!!!
Bender 1y ago
Youtube is certainly useful for discovery and monetization but if the goal is to share a video that may be censored I would suggest everyone should upload to {n+2} locations at a minimum and link to both YT and the self hosted mirrors from a blog after linking to the blog from YT. It's easier than friends of YT would suggest.

konart 1y ago

>It's amazing how people forgot to use the internet in exchange for "easier" UX. What's so amazing here? This a normal and expected human behaviour. >forgot to use the internet What does this even mean in this context?

Aldipower 1y ago
> What does this even mean in this context? Look, you've forgotten it otherwise you wouldn't ask this question.
- konart 1y ago
  No, I'm just trying to say that the whole "you are using in right/wrong" is bs. What parent comment implies (at least how a read it) is just your good old gatekeeping.
Jean-Philipe 1y ago
From my experience, it used to be quite normal for a lot of my non-technical peers to have a personal webpage on the internet with frontpage express, wordpress or geocities. Nowadays, even a lot of businesses don't have a website, but instead an Instagram or Facebook entry. YMMV The internet is still decentralized today.
- konart 1y ago
  Idk, most people I know used services like wordpress.com (so not self hosted), livejournal (and its local alternatives) etc. This if we are talking about second half of 00s. Before this? Most people barely have internet access at home. And things like BBS (for example) were for techies only with very few exceptions. Maybe it was quite different in the US for example.
  - queenkjuul 1y ago
    I don't think so, i was very young but my family didn't have Internet whatsoever until 2001 and didn't have broadband until 2005 (in the US). I certainly didn't know anyone self hosting anything (even my most tech savvy older relatives), but by 2005 we were all on Myspace.
  - Jean-Philipe 1y ago
    Yeah sure wordpress.com or geocities are not self hosted - but you had much more control over your content. People would just link to other blogs they like or comment on their guestbook / comment page. People would host php-forums. In each friends circle (school or hobby groups) there was always at least one kid who would be tech enough to host some php app on a shared hosting, and people would actually use it. But just self-hosting was not really my point, it was the degree of control that used to be common. I'd argue even myspace was much better than what we have today.

hliyan 1y ago

I wonder if the future should simply be a cloud version of a personal computer. Rather than subscribing to a lot of SaaS where your data distributed across various platforms, you "purchase" a cloud computer (could be a tiny SOC + disk, or a VM), install software on it (licensed, not subscription based), and store all your data on it, as good old-fashioned files only you and your programs can access. Including your video library, part of which you can choose to expose to the outside world through a public IP. When your cloud PC needs more memory or CPU, you upgrade, just like you do your physical device.

krige 1y ago
And then the company goes under, or decides your variant of the service is not worth maintaining, or that there is potential for enshittification. All your data, gone. And it WILL happen.
- hliyan 1y ago
  If by service, you mean the cloud machine -- I mean a plain vanilla machine running an OS of your choice (e.g. Windows or Ubuntu). Switching to another service provider means taking your file backups + reinstalling your software on the new machine. Developers already know how to do this with EC2s, Droplets, Linodes, Azure VMs etc. The process just needs to be more average-person-friendly.
  - rootnod3 1y ago
    And where then is your backup? In the same cloud? The one that just tried to rip your data sovereignity away from you? The average person still uses the same password for EVERYTHING, despite say iOS and Android making it easy as pie to just go "generate passwords for me". Telling an average person to have a 3-2-1 backup AND run stuff in the cloud that they will 100% lose the password for is not a battle I see to be won in the near future.
kakacik 1y ago
I certainly hope it shouldn't look like that, that sounds horrible on many, in fact all levels.

marcuskane2 1y ago

> your personal (not hosted by a corp) website I'm not sure that's enough. A few years ago there were some set of websites that wanted less censorship than the main corporate sites (or at least, a different set of censorship rules), I forget all their names now - voat, rumble, gab, parler, etc and people who didn't like the content they saw there just went upstream to cloud providers, app stores, registrars, payment processors, CDNs, ISPs and anywhere else in order to shut them down, cut them off or prevent access. Tons of sites that failed to perfectly comply with American media conglomerate's interpretation of copyright have been forced offline, had their domain names seized, etc. There was a period of time where the MPAA and RIAA were routinely suing random teenagers and grandparents for life-destroying sums of money because they used Napster to share a song they liked with a friend. I think to maintain any sort of real open web, we're going to need some sort of new Tor network that can support billions of users anonymously accessing information which can't be deplatformed and can't result in people getting arrested, losing their jobs, their visas or their funding for saying things that the people in power don't want said.

fluoridation 1y ago
>I think to maintain any sort of real open web, we're going to need some sort of new Tor network that can support billions of users anonymously accessing information which can't be deplatformed That already exists. They're called onion sites. What we really need is something that performs about as well as the current Internet, but is stronger against deplatforming: decentralized DNS. It doesn't even need to give memorable names like DNS does, it just needs to be a second, stable addressing layer on top of IP so clients can always find the server.
- trinsic2 1y ago
  Decentralization just puts people that run servers as middle men to further impose a censorship agenda with ActivityPub. Whatever it is it needs to be distributed like BitTorrent.
  - fluoridation 1y ago

bjourne 1y ago

Does having your personal website even matter when the agents of censorship can just request that search engines delist your urls? Or pay for tons of ads so that your site's ranking drops to the second or third page for whatever keywords it happens to match on. And if they still get sizeable traffic, they can just ask your hosting provider to cancel your account. No need to burn the books when you can just remove them.

tamimio 1y ago

And you think it will stop here? Nope, next AWS or whatever cloud where you host your clone will terminate your service, then you go and rent a bare-metal, same thing later, then you go and host it on your own hardware, the CDN will terminate it! Oh you managed to find a mediocre CDN? The ISP next! As long as there's no regulation protecting your rights, whoever has the biggest share in xyz will be in charge.

johnnyanmac 1y ago

We're in an attention economy. You don't post on Youtube for preservation, you post there to reach an audience so people know what's going on. If you're not the POTUS you don't have the luxury to use an alternative site and not be utterly ignored.