this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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Privacy
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As much as I like the privacy frontends I think 'we' have to move to alternative platforms sooner than later and pull the bandaid vs. continuing to indirectly be dependent on google as the base platform.
Content creators won't follow because there isn't any monetary incentive to do so. I have been regularly checking out Peertube for 4 years now and it is mostly a backup option for those that one day YouTube might delete their channel.
I remember early YouTube where there wasn't a financial incentive to make content and they clearly did not suffer from a lack of content.
People weren't saying "Oh, well, you can't make money on YouTube so why would you" back then. They made content because they wanted to and because it was fun.
YouTube is just entrenched in the public consciousness much like television was when YouTube came around.
I hate saying that it was different back then, but it just was. Social media was not seen as the way normal people become famous the way it is now.
It was just people attempting to create cool stuff and find a community.
The way we have PBS and NPR, I really think we need to start talking about community shared content hosting. It could go a long way in preserving knowledge without succumbing to corporate greed.
It's technically still a thing you're not supposed to do, for the most part. Still something can be sued for, civilly liable, and when you get to hosting for a massive group of people, you're risking entering criminal liability territory. However, private torrent trackers exist, and those generally function as those types of communities. Some trackers even have nice people on them.
Further, the depth of knowledge these people have about encoding/color profiles/sound engineering etc. is fucking astounding. It's always people doing it for the good of the community who seem to have the most real competence over a variety of disciplines. It's not surprising a lot of them live and breathe FOSS and GNU/Linux.
I am talking about publicly funded data hosting.
It wouldn't be used for piracy, obviously, but for what people were originally using YouTube for.
Think of all those video series from back in the day where some random dude just walked you through step by step of a house building process. Those videos are still there, but no matter what you type, you are unlikely to find the videos you really need. Just fully forgotten by the algorithm and buried on page 14 or 15, long after you gave up.
Whereas your local National Public Hosting affiliate would have every reason to prioritize that content.
It's an interesting idea, but as many have pointed out before: if you tried to propose Public Libraries in modern America, the idea would be shot down.
This proposal is Public Libraries on steroids and opens a lot of questions about ownership of the data and who can request their data be removed, etc. If its publicly funded, they can't hide behind "we own all this content because you uploaded it" like, say, Facebook does. They would be much more liable for people wanting to control their data, and if people wanted videos removed, they'd have fewer legal precedents to lean on.
Like I said, interesting idea, but it raises a multitude of questions in my mind. Who do you entrust to run it? Would it be a government organization, or something more like the BBC, where it's government-funded but separated?
I don't necessarily know how the British system is different than the US or Canada but I am a strong supporter of the US and Canada model where the federal government essentially funds the infrastructure and then the other 80℅ is through donations and fund drives and the government by law can't dictate the actual content beyond ensuring a certain percentage of funding is earmarked for educational material.
But yeah, people should decide if what they upload can be deleted
Wait, what? I don't think they were talking about piracy. They sound like they're talking about something more like a C-Span type thing, envisioned as a YouTube alternative.