this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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Privacy

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Hi, my post is focusing specifically on YouTube since I observed the following categories have less intrusive solutions or privacy focused solutions, even if they are paid:

  • Operating Systems (Linux, for example)
  • Instant Messaging (Element, for example)
  • Community Messaging (Revolt, for example)
  • E-Mail (Proton, for example)
  • Office (libreoffice, for example)
  • Password Managers (Bitwarden, for example)

However, how do we distribute videos and watch them without data collection? I am NOT asking how do I use a privacy-focused front-end for YouTube, by the way, I am aware they exist.

I am wondering how we obtain a FOSS solution to something super critical such as YouTube. It is critical since it contains a lot of educational content (I'd wager more than any other platform), and arguably the most informative platform, despite having to filter through a lot of trash. During COVID, we even saw lecturers from universities upload their content on YouTube and telling students to watch those lectures. (I have first-hand experience with this at a respectable university).

I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do about it.

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[–] [email protected] 138 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do about it.

I don't think you quite understand just how stupendous the amount of data Google processes from YouTube alone is. There is basically no way for hobbyists to provide an equivalent service. Very few companies have those kinds of resources. If you want, you can of course try running a PeerTube instance, but you rather quickly run in to problems with scaling.

I find it almost miraculous YouTube exists to begin with. It is no accident Google has very few competitors on that front, and I don't think YouTube is even profitable for them. Without Google's deep pockets and interest in monopolizing the market, YouTube would have withered a long time ago.

Trust me, I want a solution too. But 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. All of that is processed, re-encoded, and saved with multiple bitrates. You can't compete with that. YouTube might eventually keel over from Enshittification and its own impossibility, but replacing it with anything meaningful will be a challenge.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 months ago (3 children)

[...] I don't think YouTube is even profitable for them.

Correct. Even Google, one of the richest companies in the world, is struggling to afford the massive infrastructure required to run YouTube. That's why they've been cracking down on ad-blocking software lately.

Also, this is likely why they've been pushing their new updated Chromium-based infrastructure for web browsers, which will prevent ad-blockers from working on websites. If you're not using Firefox or Safari to browse the Internet by now, you should switch. They're the only independent browsers not using the Chromium framework.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

I'd even buy subscription if it was a family one without music bundled for a reasonable price. No such luck in my country.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

None of these big tech companies are profitable because they pay their execs insane amounts of bonuses

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

While I do agree with you, I also see twitch, TikTok and Patreon presenting models that are quite competitive with YouTube.

From a privacy perspective, free junk content like TikTok, YouTube and twitch will always be hard coupled with targeted advertising.

But Patreon (and onlyfans for that matter) do offer a model that can work without ads.

In fact, if Patreon also introduced an ad-supported tier and allowed you to more broadly see other content aside from the direct person you sponsor, it could probably grow quite a lot.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago
  1. Tiktok is a company comparable in scale to Google. 130Bn in revenue last year.

  2. Patreon is nowhere near the scale of YouTube. But I also think it's the only viable solution to privacy and supporting creators.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Counter-point : every single one of the videos uploaded to youtube already lives on the creators hard drive, usually in a much larger format. All that's needed is for them to create torrents for them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

I think the largest challenge though is maintaining the distribution and managing the associated upfront costs.

Existing large content producers could likely afford to handle this but new producers could struggle paying to seed their content.

Though I do think overall this is more achievable than people give it credit for:

  • YT videos don't need huge bandwidth for a sustained period; only for short bursts. Most views come in within a week.
  • Content is probably localized to specific countries. Less need to replicate across the globe.
  • Let the source prefer to seed the highest quality and other peers downsample and replicate as needed.
  • Doesn't need YT scale. Tons of YT "content" is spammers leeching essentially free hosting from YT. No one needs to seed their videos if they don't want to.
  • 1080p is still fine for YT videos. h265 is very efficient (though downsampling 265 isn't great). Don't need 4k for most videos.
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I'd have agreed but hundreds of fmovies and similar sites exist on the high seas that provide free streaming of millions of HD content (movies, web series, etc.) somehow. They use some third-party video host that is magically able to concurrently serve millions of people.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

the infrastructure of the pirate streaming sites is impressive, but I bet that is still orders of magnitude easier than hosting youtube.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Peertube exists. Use it.

now I will admit that peertube is lacking content, but when you make something put it there. When you want something search there first and check out youtube last. This rewards those who publish there with your eyeballs

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Are there any good PT clients for Android?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

Check out newpipe

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

firefox works great. You don't need an app for everything.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

I think you can use web browsers with it

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

Torrents solved this problem (big data distribution) over 20 years ago now, and is still a sizeable chunk of all internet media traffic.

All that's needed is for people to actually create torrents for their content, and a user friendly way for people to post and view magnet links.

I'm trying to integrate them into lemmy in various ways: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4204

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I'm not sure if you can replace YouTube. It's too popular and has been a mainstay of the Internet for 19 years. We won't be able to convince people to just up and leave YouTube.

Best case scenario is to lead by example and start sharing videos from PeerTube.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago

Video hosting/streaming is the hardest use-case to replace due to infrastructure costs. PeerTube exists, which works like torrents and is probably the best solution that we're gonna get for this. I don't see it replacing YouTube though, since decentralization fundamentally limits reach (and potential income as a result) and a lack of data collection makes it harder to accurately profile viewers (both of which professional content creators care about). It's probably fine for hobbyists and FOSS projects that want to distribute videos though.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The technology mostly exists. The most important question is always how do you get people to use it.

The only way I see people using decentralized solutions is by having one interface where you can watch decentralized content as well as YouTube. That way they don't loose any of the content or convenience.

No one ever bothers to open up two apps for videos, that is why a single app solution is the only way.

The unique selling point of decentralized video plattforms atm is 1) you can watch what is banned on YouTube 2) you are not beholden to the YouTube algorithm for conent.

So if we can sell that to users and not have them loose any convenience or UX, you can slowly start replacing YouTube.

Monetization is also an important point, but others have addressed this.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Ok so first let’s go over what YouTube provides: Storage, community tools, search algorithm, add sense, authority over copyright, front end.

Realistically you could probably cover the front end, search algorithm, and community tools with FOSS collaboration.

Everything else gets harder.

For storage, the VAST swaths of data, and forever growing nature of YouTube storage nearly guarantee its market dominance alone… if they can contain that infinitely growing monster forever. Its their greatest strength and can also be its Achilles heel. I would propose that video hosting would be covered by the creatives. This change creates a ripple effect that effect all the other challenges, but immediately raises the bar for entry, and with the exception of the highest earning creators, videos would have to be cycled out when their earning capability falls below cost to host. But! This has good sides, like the best videos would linger and bad videos would fall off increasing the quality of what remains. Creatives would have more control over their videos. You could also have a system that rotates videos between a cold storage and live videos, where cold storage would use a torrent like system vs the streaming of a live system, which would allow cheap storage of low earning videos to still have them available for those who could wait.

Copyright, so with the creatives holding the keys to the content, this new youtube would only facilitate the connection and front end, but would not regulate it. So copyright claims would have to be handled by the creatives. This is a sharp as hell double edged sword! You won’t be copyright trolled as successfully any more BUT your odds of ending up in court could be higher as there is no way to appease the record labels and what have you so readily. There would also not be a method to scan the videos to easily find other people who are stealing YOUR content either. And you would have to deal with the person stealing your content directly.

And ad sense. Without a unifying front to bargain with advertisers, it will be like the Wild West. Most advertisers don’t have assurances of enforced standards and will be very timid to employ this new system. They would all have to vett creatives separately, and it would work allot like Sponcers do now, but ultimately i think it would be a boon, but for a wile the money won’t be there.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

So i put more thought into this… assuming this was how a youtube competitor turned out. The negatives would begin to force certain human behaviors to mitigate risk. You would see guilds/channels form. This covers the weakness of the Wild West. Groups can bargain with more leverage from sponcers and demand more money in exchange for more consistency, these guilds/channels can also hire a lawyer on retainer if large enough to handle litigious tasks, and advise its members though copyright dangers. If it when it goes to court they can handle hiring of additional representation. The guild/channel would have say as to who they admit to the group, so they can expel risky members. But like joining an HOA creatives will have to adhere to the channels rules. But without a monolith controlling everything, you could find a guild/channel that has terms you agree with. This would bring a lot of the status quo youtube brings, but with everyone’s goals more aligned

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Honestly the biggest thing all of us is missing to take it down is financial capital.

To get the kind of capital you need to take down YouTube, you need investment money from the kind of investors who will force you to enshittify to afford paying them back.

The financial issue is the biggest one, when it comes to any and all of these.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

I'm not as optimistic as you.

Hosting video is really expensive. Making video is really expensive. YouTube was losing money for about 15 years despite having a monopoly on online video for most of that time and the best advertising tech in the world. I don't think it's possible to make a free competitor to YouTube.

On the paid side, there's plenty of streaming services that are making money. But you have to be already established in order to get a contract. And since you will typically have to use social media in order to get past that initial barrier, it might as well include YouTube.

However, my guess is that YouTube makes the majority of it's money from larger channels. If the larger channels all join paid streaming services(e.g. Nebula) then gradually that may be able to bring YouTube down.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I was just reading this issue on Github last night and I really don't see how PeerTube is any better than a traditional server for hosting videos. The peer part of it seems to have such a miniscule impact on the whole thing that it just feels like a gimmick. I've read that the biggest problem for PeerTube instance hosts is storage and not the bandwidth. The only thing that peers can save you is tiny bit of bandwidth from what I understand.

So from what I've gathered, relying on peers only for hosting the video is completely unviable. And that makes sense, especially for old, unpopular videos, there will be no peers to begin with. Even if every video on the site is being "seeded" by viewers, the reliability of connection and bandwidth would be very bad because you can't know if the peer is some guy on the dial up connection. Even in the perfect scenario where everyone had very reliable connection and good bandwidth, the fact that browsers don't support p2p protocol and rely on a hack/workaround to use it, will mean that there will be delays. So starting the video and rewinding would be painfully slow.

Is there something that I'm missing, or is PeerTube really not that much better than a "normal" video hosting server?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Pray that Google enshittifies YouTube enough for any amount of creators to migrate to Peertube

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The big problem is there are a lot of good creators who are only able to be good creators in large part because of the YouTube ad revenue they get. They would otherwise have to work normal jobs and not be able to devote the time or resources to their videos. I have little faith that enough viewers would actually pay enough money to offset the ad revenue that supports many creators. Without a way to realistically replace that financial stream there is a large chunk of YouTube that can’t migrate. Of course, that’s no loss with some of the content mills churning out crap to try and cash in on the revenue, but I’ve seen plenty of good stuff that I’m not sure would exist another way.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

Money. Lots and lots of it.

Hosting video on a significant scale is very expensive. Stupendously expensive.

Convincing people to join is also going to cost a lot of money. Consumers are on YT because creators are there, and they are already used to the platform. Creators are there because the consumers are there. And there is a robust infrastructure to make a living from content creation.

Financing is especially difficult for such a project, because companies are willing to pay way more for targeted ads. For which you need some data about your users. The more data you collect, the better the and targeting can be, the more companies are willing to pay.
Assuming there are enough users for companies to pay for advertising at all.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

As nice as an idea as it is, it will never be feesible for one reason: buy in. You would have to get everyone on youtube to migrate to the same platform. Just about everyone who uses windows has gripes about it, but the masses don't migrate to Linux. Because it is change at all, and there are too many choices. I like anyone else here, would love for folks to even consider an alternative, it's a losing battle against human nature.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Network Effect is the biggest hurdle for sure. I think it it true for so many other services too. I think we can agree there is no real technical problem to solve, we only look at the technical problems because trying to "fix" the social and political issues is a lot harder. Digital Markets Act is supposed to address this but time will tell if it has any lasting impact (in the EU).

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I wish people would start uploading their videos to Pornhub so I wouldn't get embarrassed whenever someone sees the app on my phone.

/s...or am I?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

Easy solution: host an FTP with all the videos. It has existed long before YouTube was a thing.

More advanced solution: Torrent ala Pirate Bay. High quality videos have been distributed this way long before YouTube even supported 1080p. Peertube is based on similar solution as this.

The main problem is to attract content creators to the platform. The problem isn’t technical.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Dude no one can figure out ftp. Before there was yt there were embedded QuickTime videos and video podcasts

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (3 children)

This seems like one of the few problems where crypto might actually be useful. It would allow people to automatically and anonymously pay both the creator and the host of that video. Maybe make it a federated system and every host gets paid based on how many Bytes they send. The creator gets a share of that money and the whole system uses something like Monero or whatever. Not sure what the costs of that would be, but I assume its not too outrageous. If it was, YouTube wouldn't be able to exist.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Isn't that what LBRY is trying to do?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Youtube has a Google Search to back the 15 years of constant losses by Youtube.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The key problem that needs to be solved is the monetization problem. Nostr has a potential solution though. Over the last two months alone, their users have "zapped" (tipped/donated) other users around 950K (nearly 1 mil!) USD worth via lightning and that number continues to grow. And it doesn't just make it easy to pay content creators, but to also put a portion of your "zaps" towards the relay you use or development of the software if you want. If you have a nostr account, you can easily tie it to a lightning address to send/receive tips, nostr doesn't take a fee. Relays can also portion out a bit of their zaps for the people who publish the most engaging content on their relay. The possibilities are quite extensive. And because it's over lightning, zaps happen instantly and for pennies or less in fees. Though, you can use nostr without zaps at all.

For those unfamiliar with nostr, it's a decentralized social media software much like ActivityPub/mastodon, the main use right now is as a twitter/instagram clone but there's also a reddit-style section being built up as well. Video hosting itself could be done by relays or through a P2P system similar to IPFS. Moderation abilities from the perspective of the instance/relay are identical to activitypub/mastodon. But one bonus if that if your relay goes down, you don't lose your identity, since your identity and relay are separate. And if you change apps or relays (you are typically connected to multiple relays), all your content moves with you seamlessly. And the payment/zap infrastructure is all decentralized, relays don't ever custody or manage the payments. If you tip a content creator, it goes directly from you to them. The lightning network has basically limitless transaction capacity. If you have cash app, it supports lightning, so you can already send zaps (you will need different apps to receive zaps though because cash app doesn't support the LNURL standard). Strike natively supports it. And because it's lightning, it works in every country automatically.

Long-term, if I am a content creator, which "fedi"-type system is going to be attractive to me? One where users can send me tips and mircopayments or one where they can't? This is why I think nostr is going to win out long-term over AP/Mastodon. Mastodon could add this kind of functionality but I don't get the impression they're open to it. People may not want to commit to yet another $5/month subscription to a YouTuber's patreon or nebula or whatever, but they are happy to tip 1-10c after watching a video. So there's a psychological beauty to micropayments as well. As some random person I have made like 7c on tips this month, but I've also given out plenty to other people.

Source about nostr fees: https://lemmy.ml/post/17824358

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Unfortunately this financing requires a populace widely adopting cryptocurrency...making it a pipe dream for mainstream use.

Tips are generally a bad model as well, which creates an incentive for rapid and pandering work (like ad supported content).

Patreon had frankly built all of YouTube that is worth watching. I think a simple payment system using real banks can be integrated into smaller hosting services.

It's all academic though, YouTube is unrivaled in ad revenue and helping you expand an audience.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

P2P, and shamelessly rehosting popular content.

Won't make those content creators happy... but it's the best way to get users to show up, which will attract original content creators.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The biggest issue I've always heard people say when it comes to replacing a video hosting service like YouTube is needing storage space and bandwidth.

I feel like ipfs, the interplanetary file system, could be leveraged to do this but it would require a concerted effort to make a fast, stable, reliable, and federated YouTube replacement, and I imagine that we would need people to financially support it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

IPFS is not free storage. Someone has to "pin" your video, where it then takes up space on their hard drive.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

You get me $10B annually or so, and then we can start to talk. Your single-fiber line and homelab will handle, what, 25 simultaneous users? Just have to scale that to a billion daily users or so, no bigger.

Also yt is "super critical"? Super critical is power for ICU wards and stuff, nobody is going to have a heart failure because they can't get their daily dose of #shorts. Also gestures at Wikipedia, who is glaring at you.

I think you're giving yt way, way too much credit, but simultaneously thinking that any one of us has the financial capability to not only have but risk that kind of cash. Companies have tried and failed. Users aren't doing it, chief.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Everything seems critical when you haven't tried living without. Meat eaters can't comprehend living without meat. Car drivers can't imagine living without cars.

I wondered how people pass their time without phones. Then my autistic son started demanding holding onto my phone for every waking minute he is not at school. Now I spend my day without the phone.

Now that YouTube has stopped working on NewPipe, I've stopped watching it......and it felt a bit uncomfortable to miss my videos before bed, but now it's not a big deal. None of these things are critical. There's a near infinite world of choices available to us now. We just need to pick something else.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

you offer content creators a better revenue share to make content for the new service while offering the same level of stability. there's a reason why nobody has done it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

As a PeerTube instance owner, I would say that not everyone needs to join a single instance (that would be the biggest mistake). Instead, if you can self-host one and invite people you like and know, they can provide quality content. Also, having multiple smaller instances makes it easier to moderate and have quality control. Federation and direct subscription to channels also improve instance discovery.

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