These apps need ulterior uses.
Most know Matrix as an alternative to Discord.
has it replaced Discord? No, and it isn’t likely to, buuuut Matrix is still a swiss-army-knife for other chat protocols via bridges, so it has its own use beyond Discord.
It’s still useful, even alone.
What problem does Peertube solve beyond not being Youtube?
A place to keep your videos in case of YouTube taking it off their site.
What problem does Peertube solve beyond not being Youtube?
Content creators can be in total control of their content and the platform, while still being able to reach the wider audience on the Fediverse.
There’s also features such as being able to replace an already uploaded video and for some, they would be happy not having to play the “algorithm game”.
I think we should discuss about what is holding PeerTube back. For starters a monetization system
afaik most YT creators get their money from sponsor blocks rather than ads these days, so nothing really changes there… i think the combination of sponsors and some patreon-style system is plenty, so i’m not sure monetisation is the issue
The fact that you posted a link to this video from YouTube not peer tube says a lot.
Maybe, not what you think it does, though
The point is outreach to the other platform. Sending engagement to this video on YouTube will boost it due to YouTube’s algorithm. More exposure on YouTube = more potential new PeerTube users. Publishing this on PeerTube is preaching to the choir. As an alternative platform, you always need to maintain a presence on the main platform so you can encourage people looking to leave.
Publishing this on PeerTube is also a problem. I mentioned this in another post, but to expand, I really, really, want to like PeerTube. But:
- Many running servers don’t fully grasp the bandwidth requirements. The video I tried to watch in that post got “popular” (800 views) and it took 2 minutes to even get the progress bar to load. People will leave.
- The federated nature is even more disjointed than Lemmy. It feels like a bunch of different sites still, which makes it feel like less content.
IMO PeerTube could be great, but it has a lot of shortcomings that aren’t solved by adding features and fixing bugs.
It would better to make peer tube super easy to use without needing to do more than cluck once on. A button and get going
The thing holding open source back is the gatekeeping. Developers could spend more time actually working with u.i experts to make things easy, but no. Rather make everyone think it’s some magic that requires 50 steps.
Make it easy to do business and give them a great product. That’s all that needs to be done. Do that foss community, and you’ll win.
Can you show me an example of gatekeeping in this space? I am not sure that word means what you think it means.
I mean it is open source, ANYONE can create a different UI and fork the code, which is drastic but an option.
Are you saying you have submitted UI improvements as pull requests to several projects and had them tell you they would not merge due to a desire to keep the UI the way they designed it?
Working with you UX experts? You mean like hire them? With what money?
Otherwise, the UX experts need to step up and volunteer their services, just like programmers do when they create FOSS.
Or at least publishing links to both would look better.
It’s a nice thought but even this guy did not continue his Peertube instance. More of a thought experiment.
The main value of youtube for many of us is the enormous video collection, which is impractical for anyone else to duplicate. Need to fix an old washing machine (I did, recently)? Type in the make and model and there’s an instructional vid. It’s unfortunate that Google has exclusive control over such a resource, but here we are.
Maybe a silly idea, but what about a P2P-based video hosting! Hear me out:
We have more computing power and bandwith in our homes than ever before. We know that sharing data and files via P2P works, is resiliant against attacks, and scales really well.
No server costs mean that people could support creators by seeding the content to other peers. One cool thing about that would be seeing how you are making a difference, in real time.
The difficult part is not the software or even the hosting. It’s more about the network effects and the ability to let users monetize uploads, which in turn creates vast potential for abuse and fraud, which in turn has to be addressed by burning stupendous resources. At a certain point people stop wanting exposure or “making a difference” for their own sake, and instead want to get paid in genuine coin of the realm.
Absolutely, people still need money. So P2P would not solve that bit, but at least the donations can go directly towards content creation rather than having to cover server costs as well.
I think it’s running it at a loss too. But there’s no reason these platforms couldn’t be publicly owned.
Publicly owned by which government? Because I don’t think YouTube’s home of the US is really a good choice right now.
A centralized platform providing infrastructure could be financed using a tax on every internet subscription.
That’s actually not a bad idea, but who would hold that money? Elon and Ron DeSantis showed that anyone can just waltz into a government office and steal all their money.
I agree. I’m not thinking about USA at all.
As for the EU, we should fund a federated or decentralised system. I think it works well on Lemmy. For example I know not to trust feddit.org for anything related to Palestine. Content on other servers shows their pro-Israel bias.
I think a system like that could benefit the US to a point, at least until the government block all external news and commentary.
It was, but monetization has been so aggressively everywhere that I think they finally are in the black at least since 2018.
I had no idea. You’re right. It was a $15B business in 2019. https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-alphabet-earnings-revenue-first-time-reveal-q4-2019
Makes the ads seem even more obscene now that I know that.
That only mentions revenue, we still don’t know their operating costs.
You’re right 🤦🏻♂️
deleted by creator
I wonder what would happen if Google decided to “turn off” YouTube.
some random mfs with 400TB of hoarded YouTube videos will emerge out of hiding
I would be free from relying on a single google server for anything.
And sadly now I have to watch a video. Wouldn’t step by step instructions be quicker and more effective? Yes. They were. Now it’s some video wasting my time.
Not sure that is a great example.
I hate that this has become so commonplace. Yes for some - mostly physical - things it’s much better if you can see someone do it. But finding an obscure setting in an app shouldn’t be a video.
Stuck on a 20 step installation process? Here’s a 10 minute video showing all the steps you already know before the phase you’re stuck. Sure you can scrub through it, but it’s still faster to skim and scroll through a text with images.
Unfortunately, when you do find a text article explaining the thing it’s often unnecessarily long and padded out with meaningless fluff, just so more advertising can be stuffed within the contents.
This is the lure of a. I. And it’s insidious.
Wouldn’t step by step instructions be quicker and more effective?
For this type of work, typically no, it’s quicker and more effective to have someone show you exactly how to do it.
No. That’s generalizing
It depends on the person learning. You may get more out of a video and I may get more from a book
I just can’t get into using Peertube. I love the idea, but in my experience, it just doesn’t work the way it should. Slow, low video quality, hard to get the federation working properly, and most importantly, a general lack of content creators I care to follow.
I stick with Odysee for this, and several other reasons.
Consider using Grayjay, you can combine creators from various sources to one app. Including YouTube, Peertube, Dailymotion, Odysee and lots of others.
I subscribe to some people on PeerTube and Dailymotion (only news orgs) alongside my Youtube subs, so that I am not only relying on YouTube
I do, but the desktop version is still barebones compared to FreeTube or the Odysee webpage. It’s great on mobile, though!
And as for Peertube, I guess part of the problem is that it doesn’t feel as connected as other Fediverse services seem to feel. Not sure why, it just feels really disjointed to me.
I don’t think PeerTube will take a significant market share or become a lot more popular until it gets some sort of monetization scheme in place. Maybe if bandwidth for 1080p is basically free in 10-20 years.
Just a friendly headsup about Odysee. You are probably aware already and are selecting content carefully based on this, but Odysee hosts a lot of content that is considered disinformation, hate speech, far-right etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysee -> Moderation.
I agree with you on Peertube. I’d love to see it grow but I just don’t see it doing so until things change significantly.
Also, I don’t believe in censorship of legal speech protected under the US constitution so the moderation issue doesn’t bother me. I just block channels and accounts I don’t like.
Dude… you had my upvote indtil odysee!
I don’t know if I need to ask, but what’s wrong with Odysee?
It’s mostly unmoderated so you have the extremists channels there who are banned from the mainstream platforms. Also it has a reputation for being a platform to whitewash/launder money to said extremist persons or organisations
Yep, this is pretty much what I was expecting to hear. You know you can block channels/accounts you don’t like, no? I don’t believe in censorship of legal speech. As long as no violence is being threatened, as long as drugs aren’t being sold and as long as children are not being harmed, it falls under the first amendment. If I don’t like what someone says, I just block them because that’s what the internet was always about: free expression, even of ideals we don’t like or agree with.
Well, the first amendment is mainly only an American amendment isn’t it? The world is a large place, and we seem to see things differently some times. I agree that as a user, I can block whatever I don’t want to see, but that said, linking my viewers to a platform where they risk being exposed to extremists, rubs off on me too.
All drugs should be legal and regulated.
So in other words you’re bragging about how stupid you are ?? Did Odysee trigger something in you ? Do you have a special kind of PTSD ?
You kind of prove a point
Joined PeerTube last month and have had great success with it in terms of as a platform and place to share art / content, though of course the views have been low.
I’m sure there is a megathread elsewhere but would love to see an acceleration of folks adopting the Fediverse. My talking point has been to sort of sell Fediverse alternatives (Lemmy, Pixelfed, Mastodon) as superior to other big tech alternatives out there (such as BlueSky and Flashes). We are either at the vanguard of a mass migration or just migrating while no one else is intending to, which I guess amounts to the same thing!
If any of the top 500 youtube channels joined peertube, things would surely change. Unfortunately a few of those have started their own video platforms e.g Mr Beast has his own.
I’m sure if a few of the top youtube channels of the biggest countries joined peertube that would also give an important push to peertube.
Linux is finally becoming mainstream. I love it.
That’s kinda true, but what does that have to do with the comment you replied to?
It is related to the increased calls to encourage the adoption of free and open source software, which are alternatives to corporate products. 🙂
There was a lot of energy around strategy when I joined in January (can you guess why? Lol). The limiting factor seems to be chosen participation. Lots of people have opinions, not many people want to organize their thoughts into, eg. an effective advertising campaign, a github pull request, or basically anything other than meaningless musing.
Here were some threads in my message history I found insightful: https://lemmy.world/post/25512565 https://lemmy.world/post/25553607 https://lemmy.world/post/27824597
I’m not really skilled in anything relevant, so my strategy has been:
- On mainstream social platforms, point out any hint of enshittification and follow up with a recommendation toward a specific Fediverse alternative.
- Link directly to discussions or articles I found on Lemmy that I thought were worth sharing
- Building partnerships in my existing communities with the corresponding Lemmy communities to encourage user flow
Lots of people have opinions, not many people want to organize their thoughts into, eg. an effective advertising campaign, a github pull request, or basically anything other than meaningless musing.
This is the nature of free work. Any donation of time is sparse and intermittent. People have bills to pay. The best and brightest want to be paid well for their time. This requires a business model of some kind, and monetising that work. This is antithetical to FOSS projects, and is the reason they will almost always be inferior to projects with large budgets with teams of UX designers. /obligatory COME AT ME BRO
Ironically, I think Fediverse suffers from a high amount of tech expertise and not enough project managers, lol. Not enough people cracking the whip saying “users said x feels confusing, what can we do about it?” then establishing timelines and check-ins. Maybe instead of Lemmy devs saying, “we accept nearly every pull request,” they should say, “we want a project manager to help recruit volunteers on specific issues x, y, and z”.
I think Peertube is more of a Vimeo alternative. YouTube is built around advertising.
Really? And here I thought they were all video platforms. Youtube advertising is just an added layer of enshittification.
I’m guessing maybe they meant that the people uploading to YouTube more often than not are hoping to make money from it. Or even if that’s not what they meant, it is definitely a big difference between platforms.
Sure, I was being slightly facetious to make a point about the issues that Peertube solves. IMHO the most valuable part of Youtube is the one Peertube replaces — videos.
The Youtube advertising that people seem to make money off is the part I already do my damnedest to avoid with third party apps and front ends. Peertube solves that as well.
Same issue as Lemmy. Not enough people see centralized media as an issue and thus the status quo will continue.
Ehhh, I feel it’s not just that.
Yeah, people don’t think centralized media is an issue, and thus don’t join Fediverse, causing it to be a little dead and discourages others from using it as an alternative.
However, YT is a job for the thousands that create content on there, and reasonably so, they need money to make said content and pay bills. Which means ads, cause be real, most people (including me) don’t wanna join a Patreon to see their content. I just can’t think of many creators who I love enough to drop consistent money on them, never mind several at once.
Lemmy doesn’t need to be monetized to entice people, because Reddit wasn’t built on that (karmawhoring gets you no money). Even pixelfed could make it as an alternative, because creators aren’t paid by ads or Insta themselves, they get money from sponsorships and promoting their shops.
But YT? It’s built to make money from putting in ads. So unless creators lived off of sponsors alone and the few who subscribe to Patreon, they’re shit outta luck if they join Peertube.
That is a very good point and is something that needs to be sorted out. There is or at least was a video platform that paid crypto that I think had the right ideas, but was not well executed and frankly even if it was great, most crypto projects were scams.
I do suspect that as we make our way more into the AI and robotics era, that how we measure value will shift and suddenly decentralized platforms will generate some form of income of it will even be called that. Until then, you are right, there is little incentive for creators to move to a platform that makes them no money and people are ok with their privacy and data being shared so the status quo it is.
Like with fucking, friction is the difference between pleasure and pain. If I click a YT link and the video starts playing, no lag, no buffering, just plays, I will come back.
I tried to watch the French dude describing Texas, hosted on Peertube. It took 17 minutes, 3 attempts, 2 error messages, lag while playing.
Can’t change the paradigm with thrift.
That’s weird, I watch it every day and have never had an issue like that.
Interesting. I’ve watched some videos without issue, though not many since there aren’t that many to watch.
Sounds like a personal issue TBH
Wow, someone should make a bot for awareness or something.
Video hosted on YouTube. You answered your own question.
I think posting it on Peertube would maybe be preaching to the choir.
