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Personally, if I'm here I'm in the mood to read and almost never to watch a video. What about you?

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[-] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 5 points 2 hours ago

I don't mind them but I also don't usually watch them.

[-] spittingimage@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Same. Especially if the post is a vague heading and a link with nothing else.

[-] ccunning@lemmy.world 14 points 5 hours ago

Especially the blind links to YouTube.

Tell me what you’re linking to (particularly the channel or creator) and why it’s worth my time. Otherwise I’m not even giving it a second thought…

[-] mesamunefire@piefed.social 3 points 2 hours ago

I womder if this is a limitation on the lemmy side. Piefed and mbin(?) And other fediverse services have more info when viewimg videos and pulls in metadata at time of run. Youtube/peertube/raw videos. Users may be assuming the same info is making its way into the community.

Is there a good example somewhere of a blind link i can look at? We can make a comparison and/or comfirm the issue.

[-] ccunning@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Here is an example of what I’m talking about:

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/73061764

How I see it in my client(Voyager):

• In my feed

• In the post itself

[-] mesamunefire@piefed.social 3 points 1 hour ago

Interesting. So in the original feed it attempted to pull inthe metadata:

image looks like it was not successful. Maybe a different language?

On piefed it was also not successful:

image So the metadata didnt show up.

https://kbin.earth/ showed the reposts:

image

Its all over the place. I can see this being frustrating!

[-] mesamunefire@piefed.social 2 points 1 hour ago

One final note: mastodon/gotosocial complains about lack of metadata: image

Which is what I would expect.

So to summarize. Yes its all over the place with descriptions and video data all over the fediverse. It would be nicer if people put something in the description. And if fedi clients can maybe auto-push the description on the video to the post like it occurs on peertube/piefed that would be nice as well.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 3 hours ago

I won't even view clickbait links to text articles. If a title is "This amazing thing just happened in Canada" and the content is actually important, then someone else will write an article about it sooner or later.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

There are things that can only really reasonably be done in video. !ukraine@sopuli.xyz has clips of attacks being shown, for example. For those, I'm fine.

I almost always dislike things that could be done in text being in video. It's faster to read than to watch, and much easier to skip around. It's easily searchable, can be viewed on any kind of Internet connection, and consumes less battery on low-power systems. I think that a lot of the content that shows up in this form exists only because YouTube provides an easy way for people to monetize content, and there isn't really a terribly effective analog for text.

There are a very, very small handful of things that I can think of where one could use both forms, and I've seen someone use video to legitimately get information across more-quickly. Maybe Montemayor's military history videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXjydKPcX60

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHO6xrSF7Sw

I've read a bunch of material about the Battle of Midway, and while you can find more-detailed material out there, and if you put an hour-and-a-half into watching those three videos, you'll probably get more out of it relative to the time invested than you would from the other sources I've gone through. Some of that is because of his heavy use of maps. Annoyingly, a lot of text sources don't stick maps showing the state of a battle inline, but put them in separate sections or rely on a single map with tracks containing timestamps that one has to keep referring back to. Much easier to get a sense of what's going on spatially to have "current state of things" maps thrown onscreen as one walks through the events.

But that sort of thing is really the exception that proves the rule. I'd guess that the great majority of videos I've seen could (a) be done in text and (b) be much more-condensed and I could pick up all the relevant material with much less time investment.

[-] snooggums@piefed.world 5 points 4 hours ago

If it doesn't have a description of what is in the video I tend to ignore them.

Posts where it is clear that the video is just from title, like a link to a music video for a song, are perfectly fine. But a post that says a person comments on a topic need something more than that before I'm going to click, especially if I don't know who the person is and why I would care about what they have to say.

[-] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 15 points 6 hours ago

There's a place for them. There's a place for everything. I agree if I'm here I'm mostly here to read/comment but it's easy enough for me to just skip videos.

[-] Cherry@piefed.social 12 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

It is frustrating when a video is just dumped with no text, explanation reason or discussion. I also don't like it when its used to market a brand/product or a influencer. Mostly because it feels like its there to take from the community here rather than contribute.

I actually love video and visual content but in recent years i have become offput due to the youtube effect of stupid voices and clickbait titles. It always feels a bit pushy, like i am being Told or Sold something, which destroys my natural inquisitiveness.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 10 points 6 hours ago

I feel like any video link more than a few minutes isn't really meant to be viewed directly from the post/link.

If something seems interesting, I'll put it on the TV and go back to browsing.

I can't imagine people just watch a long video on their phones or only screen. It's just people sharing a link to be watched elsewhere

[-] radix@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago

There is some content that is better as a video. But turning what should be a one paragraph statement into a 15 minute video? Fuck that noise.

[-] early_riser@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

Are we talking just links to off-site videos or video uploads? A lot of fediverse servers probably don't have the resources to host a lot of video content I'm guessing. When Imgur stopped being served in the UK I actually switched instances because my first Lemmy account was on a very small very specialized instance and I didn't want to clog it with unrelated uploads.

There's a lot I probably don't understand about how AP works and how it distributes content though, so 🤷

[-] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

A lot of fediverse servers probably don’t have the resources to host a lot of video content I’m guessing.

There is a Fediverse video-hosting platform, but it's not the Threadiverse


it's PeerTube.

Now, I don't think that they actually have the resources to handle a lot of load either, but if you're running a PeerTube instance, at least you're signing up for that and know what you're getting into.

I think that most Threadiverse instances are willing to do text and maybe some images, up to a limited size. My home instance's image-rs setup will accept uploads of (small) WebM files, but it's really not intended for doing general video hosting.

[-] joeljoelle@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 points 6 hours ago

I will watch music videos but that's about it, but I'm a bit of an outlier as I never really got into watching videos or youtube in the first place

[-] remon@ani.social 7 points 6 hours ago

I'm with you, they should only be in dedicated video- or special interest communities where it's appropriate.

[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 7 points 6 hours ago

It has to REALLY grab my interest in order for me to watch it, and I'm probably going to back out if I see that it's longer than a minute or two.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

I wish PeerTube was better (more content and easier to find it, especially across instances).

This is less reasonable, but it would also be really cool if trying to insert a video from Youtube or some other centralized site caused it to get reuploaded to a PeerTube instance running alongside the Lemmy (or other service, like Mastodon?) instance the post was in.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

It's okay but I would really love if I was able to filter by video, picture, article link or text post.

Sometimes, I'm really looking for interesting text posts and discussions to read and it would be nice to skip the memes and all that.

[-] LordFireCrotch@lemmy.today 4 points 6 hours ago

Oooh, I like this idea.

They're already sent through with a type attached. So maybe having a nice filter client side would help out.

[-] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 1 points 4 hours ago

I hate links to YouTube. I hate it with every core of my body. You're telling me that to engage with the post, I have to click a link that opens up a fucking ad that I have to watch 10 seconds before I can skip it, while also getting recommended some alt-right taking head or some bullshit clickbaif video?

On reddit, you can upload videos directly. I know that structure is expensive. But that would be my preferred solution.

[-] chahn.chris@piefed.social 0 points 3 hours ago

Please god no. I love that this place is the internet like it should be.

When it goes to video format domination we are officially in the engagement downward spiral.

[-] Carl@anarchist.nexus 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

My biggest complaint about videos is simply that the fediverse hasn’t figured out a decent video hosting solution yet. YouTube is an evil monolith, but at least their videos fucking load. It seems like every other video hosting solution that the fediverse tries either buffers endlessly or refuses to load entirely.

Also, fuck catbox.moe, those links never fucking work for me. I’m convinced they have my VPN blocked, because every single catbox link is completely dead. If I’m blocked, at least tell me that instead of just sitting on an endless loading page with no fucking content.

At least with something like Lemmy, the videos aren’t being served algorithmically. It’s communities I have subscribed to, rather than having some shadowy algorithm decide what it thinks will keep me engaged. That’s my big complaint with most modern video platforms, and Lemmy doesn’t do that because it’s content I have actively subscribed to.

Plus, I greatly prefer this kind of comment platform, instead of whatever Instagram/Tiktok/YouTube/etc are doing. Having a video posted here means I can access it along with my preferred comment format.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 25 minutes ago)

It seems like every other video hosting solution that the fediverse tries either buffers endlessly or refuses to load entirely.

I mean, I can view PeerTube videos. There is some decidedly fringe and bizzare content on PeerTube, and in general, it's short of things that I personally want to view, but my problem isn't "I can't view the video".

I am very skeptical that PeerTube is going to be a viable YouTube alternative in the way that the Threadiverse is Reddit. Video costs much more money to transport than text. YouTube has a way to make money from their viewers. I just don't believe that a handful of volunteers are going to come up with enough money to fund global unicast video distribution. Yeah, maybe over time bandwidth grows cheaper, but then YouTube is going to be running higher-res content or 3D content or God knows what.

But, viability in the grand scheme of things aside, PeerTube does work for me, at least to the extent of being able to view video streams.

Also, fuck catbox.moe, those links never fucking work for me. I’m convinced they have my VPN blocked, because every single catbox link is completely dead.

I'd be more-inclined to suspect that your network provider is blocking Catbox.

If you're on Linux, the mtr-tiny package on Debian (and maybe other distros) has the mtr command, which will basically run repeated traceroutes, and can run using TCP rather than ICMP packets. You can run $ mtr --tcp --port 443 catbox.moe to see if HTTPS packets heading for Catbox start getting blackholed.

If the packets make it all the way to one hop short of Catbox, then it's probably Catbox blocking. If they stop before that, then it's probably your network provider.

Strictly-speaking, there are other ways that you could be getting blocked, but this is the most-straightforward way to do it, at the TCP or IP level, so if you are getting blocked, that'll probably show you a breakdown.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 1 points 18 minutes ago

I think storage is more of an issue with peertube. Not only do you have to store potentially high resolution video, you have to store copies at all the lower resolutions that can be streamed.

Personally I'd like to see something using IPFS for video.

That said, peertube is used by bestgore of all people, so someone's managed to make it work.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 0 points 4 hours ago

My biggest complaint about videos is simply that the fediverse hasn’t figured out a decent video hosting solution yet.

https://joinpeertube.org/

[-] nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 6 hours ago

I like videos, not a lot. But every now and then I see them, and I enjoy them.

[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I wish embedding was better, but generally its a great way to have discovery. Discovery is a huge issue for platforms like invidious and peer-tube; if you are trying to degoogle/ decentralize, you still need a way find material.

[-] mrdown@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I welcome all types of formats. The best format is subjective

this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
48 points (96.2% liked)

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