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I personally see Peertube as something that'd be better as a small-scale, reasonably low-key way of storing and sharing videos if you're not interested in monetization or views. For example, documentation for a passion project.
For everything else, a different form of decentralization makes more sense, such as Odysee (though we'll see how the Arweave migration goes).
Running an actively used Peertube instance is a lot more expensive than, for example, a Lemmy instance. Videos take up a lot more storage than text. Not only that, the videos also need to be processed and then served. Who will keep paying for the monthly server bills?
Then there's monetization. Most YouTube creators are there because they make a living out of YouTube. There is no such thing on PeerTube. They would need to solely rely on donations.
The ideal PeerTube network would be where every somewhat big content creator ran their own instance and maybe a few general instances for smaller content creators that are regularly donated to.
If YouTube ever gets killed by Google, don't expect many people to come here.
Hosting video requires a lot more resources than hosting text, hyperlinks, or even pictures. It might be too much for individuals to self host video on a scale that could even distantly resemble how we use youtube today.
Then again, maybe there are ways to make that burden smaller. IIRC Peertube does do some p2p stuff to try and share the burden a bit but I’ve also heard that it’s not really feasible to rely on that to scale.
Then again, maybe there are ways to make that burden smaller.
Yes: encode on lower resolutions.
Most of the videos on Youtube don't ever need to be 4K. They don't even need to be 1080p. Heck, most don't even need 720p! Things like music videos, where what's important is the music, orthings like old TV broadcasts or play rips of old consoles, where the source barely gets to 360p, can be encoded to 360p or even 244p without any suffering (I played Monster Hunter on the 3DS for years and I can attest 244p can do great works of magic).
This mixes wonderfully with Peertube's idea about hosting your own instance. If you are hosting your own video storage, you'll want to maximize the amount of stuff you can throw into it. If someone complains that your videos aren't 1080p, tell them to go to /donate.php and do their part.
I have a server with less than 100gb that's running it for a year so far. No issues and even has a channel with 100 or so subscribers (literally my dog).
It's p2p capabilities make it pretty easy to distribute videos. And the server admins have the ability to toggle if they want to host other videos from other instances or not. They even have the ability to host specific individual videos if they want to support certain creators. Its a very intelligent system.
If anyone wants to take a look, we have a couple different communities/channels/videos over on [email protected]
For small-scale stuff like that it will surely work. It’s unclear if it scales to youtube volumes. Maybe it doesn’t have to though, small scale stuff is valuable too.
Also to be fair I feel like YouTube has a large amount of deadish Internet content or just content that can't exist in a landscape that doesn't reward getting clicks (think Mr. Beast and similar).
I think P2P has stood the test of time. Torrents scale extremely well, any large scale video would have so many peers the server wouldn't have to participate at all. These days most torrents easily saturate my gigabit connection no problem with just a handful of peers. Torrents tends to spread like wildfire.
The main issue would be storage space, but I think a lot of YouTubers would be perfectly okay with spending $5-10 a month to pay for the storage costs with all the benefits you get from not being tied to YouTube's ToS and policies. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the earnings from sponsor spots.
Yep no reason to scale until you need to scale.
Everyone wants it to be YouTube. With ads and algorithms and....
Just let it be peertube. It works now.
And? Now scale up to YouTube size allow more creators
100 subscriber is NBD. Let's talk when you have thousands or even millions of active users. At some point you're going to hit a wall if you were to hypothetically scale up. Costs of service would need to be covered somehow.
I'm not sure peertube HAS thousands of viewers
It does but that's beside the point. We're discussing a hypothetical future.
It's not about adoption. It's about money.
Superfamousguy (a youtube user I just ficticiously created to represent every single big name youtuber) doesn't make videos in their room talking about whatever, and uploads whenever.
These guys have a strict schedule. They need to shoot today. Edit tonight, upload tomorrow exactly at 11am. Because their users are conditioned to expect those videos at those times. So they get sponsored, and now advertisers are promised an average viewcount on the dominant video platform at a certain time. They're paying superfamousguy money for those promises.
It's not a hobby, it's a job. And advertisers are not going to be willing to touch peertube because it's handled by so many fragmented cases that it's impossible for peertube to have the stability of youtube.
So, I'm not saying peertube can't grow. I'm just saying its decentralized nature will scare most advertisers away. Without the advertisers, superfamousguy can't make a living. And at that point it doesn't matter if peertube has twice as many viewers as youtube. Without money, these professionals cant fund their crew, they can't make videos, and thus stick to youtube.
Really, Google and Amazon are the only players large enough to make an alternative and host it.
Both companies should just be nationalized by their countries they have their HQ in, or globalized by the UN.
These are integral parts of our world and society, we shouldn't allow them to be owned and controlled by private intrests.
I consider two things to think Peertube not being sustainable isn't the case.
First, the noise caused bad actors / professional fearmongerers, and people too used to Youtube or that think any social medias would skyrocket in the first month of service, may make people think it's a far more prevalent opinion.
Second, platforms such as Peertube may cather to any movements, be them cultural, political, for business, and so on, while also, due to being based on instances, it much harder to be taken over.
Those two together make me see the project as having great potential, a potential that some may fear intentionally or otherwise.
And on a side note, "the new mobile app" reminds me, anyone could potentially make programs for it, or even integrate Peertube to their own. Another reason for it being able to cather to way more people, I think, as then programs could be made to interests and needs otherwise not found.
I never heard that. I also think Peertube is doing great. And development has been constant, we get new features all the times, for years now.
Yeah and the arrival of the mobile app with the ability to log into your account is a huge step.
The next step would be to be able to lock some content for people who are not supporting creators (to motivate creators to post on peertube and make money with it).
Something like a Patreon? That'd probably be useful to some people in addition to the already existing donation option.
Is this already requested? They have a page for that: https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/ and listen to our feedback. So if that's not already on there, you might want to add the idea. (I haven't checked.)
Thanks for the link.
I’ve created the request and you can vote for it https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/posts/285/allow-creators-to-make-their-channel-watcheable-only-with-financial-support
Nice, thanks. I gave it an upvote.
There is already a plug-in that supports that, along with Stripe integration.
The sustainability argument stems from technological constraints. YouTube as a company has no problem sustaining millions of dollars in server infrastructure to serve media. Most self-hosters wouldn't be able to do that without significant income.
I don't agree with this perspective but also don't know enough about server infrastructure or video streaming to argue against it.
'shure' is a misspelling I have never encountered.
I've recently caught myself making this spelling mistake recently, but I think it has only happened since I interacted with a company that makes microphones named Shure, so I blame them.
Corrected, ty. I'm a non-english musician :D
A Kodi client that allows seeking would be great.
Discoverability is one of the bigger issues. In YouTube there is a huge push to be more discoverable to the algorithm and to keep users on the platform. In peertube there's no such pressure...for better or worse.
Yep not sustainable. Think of how much diak space YouTube is using. Just was reading this morning how peertube instances limit new users and that's ok. If everyone can't upload videos it we'll never replace YouTube.
Some peertube instances do, most do not. Some have manual processes, some don't.
Ex: https://makertube.net/signup
And no one is stopping anyone from creating their own server. Yunohost even makes it a one click solution.
It's just like Lemmy/fediverse stuff. Each instance provider has their own rules. And that's ok
This is just 12 different kinds of incorrect.
Think of how much diak space YouTube is using
Disk space will be the least of your concerns when running a service like YT.
If everyone can't upload videos it we'll never replace YouTube.
Disk space is quite cheap and I'm sure high quality vids could take a very small space if NPU processed and upscaled.
Disk space is relatively cheap, until you also count redundancy, backups, storage hardware, utilities, and bandwidth.
Hell, using consumer grade, free tools (handbrake) I can convert a DVD to mkv and reduce the file size upwards of 75%, and still be perfectly viewable on a current 65" TV.
I can only imagine the capabilities of Google/YouTube. It would be fascinating to see a high level diagram of how they handle a video.