I currently support Nebula. That was easy money to spend, unlike the prospect of giving YouTube anything.

Also - since they actually curate their content - there's less of it, and higher quality. Kinda speaks to some of both our points. If they had a policy of "free to all, after a while" (like a lot of patreon people do), they might well have attempted some kind of distributed hosting. Hard to say for sure, but a guy can dream.

Federated video streaming may not have all the questions answered right now, but people are already attempting it. I think the right optimizations, the right content, and the right audience will push it really far. And maybe it won't be "YouTube quality" for a while (or ever), but who needs 4k60 Minecraft/Fortnight lets-plays anyway?

That's one of the use-cases I've had in mind. You have your site, you have a video. If you posted your video to your site though PeerTube (or really any implementation of ActivityPub), both your direct site viewers AND anyone searching PeerTube (et al) would see it.

If lots of people did that, you have a basis for a version of distributed YouTube. Small creators' (or people just messing around) videos might load slower or only have lower bandwidth options (resolution), but larger, focused creators (CorridorCrew, Kurzgesagt, SciShow, etc) would have more options through viewer support and collaborations.

Good, I'm glad advertising will suffer. Even on YouTube, creators don't make shit from platform advertising. Their best shot is either premium user watch time, or direct sponsors (heavy emphasis on the latter).

The number of instances is relevant because it illustrates that this is already a maturing project, not a proof of concept. It's not even the only federated video platform project.

As for the how; I'm not going to sit here and develop a roadmap for you just because you think I'm being reductive. Yes, it's complicated, but it's also not magic. Adoption breeds innovation (more eyes, more devs, more complaints), and necessity breeds refinement. Want to reduce file sizes and make the most of bandwidth? Develop/refine codecs (see h.264 vs AV1). Not satisfied with the speed of encoding, or want to squeeze more frames out faster with existing hardware? Refine the encoder. Don't want latency for distant users? Make sure the app knows how to find closer peers. These are just natural refinements made over time, same thing YouTube did.

Which brings us to monetization; First, maybe advertizers /should/ be a little picker, and more careful. Hell, there are news stories alleging that Google itself isn't being totally honest about how ads are being shown, or to how many people. And also, fuck advertising. I'll pay for a well run federated instance (or run my own) before I give YouTube one cent after all the shitty things they've done (their terrible handling of DMCA comes to mind).

Being hard doesn't mean it's not possible, or not worth it. Even if it's slower, or lower resolution, or "only" 24/30fps, it's well worth it to get out from under these fucking monolith providers we've chained ourselves to.

So there only need to be 135,000 peertube instances to hit YouTube scale? That doesn't sound like a big deal. It's not like they will all magically appear overnight, but neither did YouTube's scale.

Everything in the fullness of time. One person sets up an instance for fun. Another sets one up for ideological reasons. Then someone else sees setting up an instance as a practical matter, because their family doesn't need to put up with ads just to share home movies. That creates enough of an ecosystem that some people set up as a way to extend their reach or hedge their bets. Someone else realizes that their real income is from through paid subscriptions, so it's cheaper to run an instance than to pay Google their take. And so on.

Maybe it fails, but accepting failure before making an attempt is one of the most insidious flaws in human nature. It should be battled at every opportunity.

You massively underestimate the development effort and the know & how that is in Youtube

Yet they still can’t stop adblockers. Despite what this article says I have no problems with ublock. All my friends ublock still works.

Youtube coders know more about “Cracking the Coding Interview” than they do about making good software. Just a bunch of egotistical greedy little pigs working for their perceived reputation and money.

I 100% agree. Right now, people are just kind of mildly irritated. My irritation is more than mild, hence my leaving entirely.

I'm just speculating now, but it's possible that the Google anti-trust might result in YouTube spinning off again. If they also see that coming, they might be trying to backstop it while they still have time and resources to try things (cutting off adblockers, increasing premium fees, they already changed how rev-sharing eligibility and payouts work, etc).

There's a high chance that they're going to make the wrong move and piss everyone off, or people will just stop putting up with 2 minutes of unskippable ads before, then again during, then after each video. Content will start getting pirated en masse, advertiserzers will drop (or pay less, or force even more ads to compensate, which is what already happened), and the cycle will continue and get worse until the service just collapses under it's own weight.

Something will take it's place. Probably multiple things. I just hope federated services are among them. Hell, people adopted Crypto ferociously, which was extremely expensive and completely useless. Even if federated video is expensive, at least it does something.