this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

A lot of people, despite using a federated reddit alternative, will think of any reason to discourage the use of peertube I've noticed. It doesn't need to REPLACE youtube, that's basically impossible. You can use Peertube WITH YouTube. "Does it do anything different than youtube?" You can control what gets deleted and what stays up. "That's the only thing? It needs to do more." You can livrestream with it, and why would it need to do more than youtube? It gives you fucking CONTROL back in your hands! This is all about putting the people, back in control of the internet! The p2p aspect of peertube makes this the best competitor a community has to these giant companies with their world burning server farms. Why is this so hard for people to not be fascinated with having an option you can run with old PC hardware?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago

hey I don't have time to watch this so I'll ask here since you're arguing in favor of it: how is storage handled? is it a concern? wouldn't any reasonable amount of storage have the risk of being almost immediately run out of space if the instance is even modestly popular?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It gives you fucking CONTROL back in your hands! This is all about putting the people, back in control of the internet!

So do I2P, HyphaNet (formerly FreeNet) and ZeroNet. They're all P2P networks and can run on old hardware, with the drawback being that you can't access normal internet sites while connected to them

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago

that sounds less like "a drawback" and more like "fucking unusable"

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

Sometimes, I think that peertube would work better as simply being a different section of a personal/private website. You know how some sites hosted their own videos back before youtube became "the only place to post videos"? Gametrailers, Machinima, ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, etc.

Federation helps with discovery, but not much beyond that, I think.

[–] [email protected] 117 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The fact that you posted a link to this video from YouTube not peer tube says a lot.

[–] [email protected] 83 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 days ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 130 points 2 days ago (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I think it’s running it at a loss too. But there’s no reason these platforms couldn’t be publicly owned.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It was, but monetization has been so aggressively everywhere that I think they finally are in the black at least since 2018.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That only mentions revenue, we still don't know their operating costs.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Publicly owned by which government? Because I don't think YouTube's home of the US is really a good choice right now.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I wonder what would happen if Google decided to "turn off" YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

some random mfs with 400TB of hoarded YouTube videos will emerge out of hiding

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago

I would be free from relying on a single google server for anything.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

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”.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A place to keep your videos in case of YouTube taking it off their site.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Right now, this is the only use.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

It can also host your live streams, twitch has mandatory adds or something last time I checked after you gain a certain amount of viewers. If you multistream, you stream to twitch and inform them about your Peertube being add free.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I think we should discuss about what is holding PeerTube back. For starters a monetization system

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Server costs and disk limitations.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (3 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

just peertube recommendation algorithm browser extension. Working pretty well and ik discovering channels that make/reupload well produced content

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago

It's a nice thought but even this guy did not continue his Peertube instance. More of a thought experiment.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 days ago (15 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
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