
PeerTube. What It Is, and What I Think It's Problems Are - valeg
https://mrfunkedude.com/2019/02/18/peertube/
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sschueller
I am working on the android client incase anyone wants to contribute. Any help
is appreciated.

[https://github.com/sschueller/peertube-
android](https://github.com/sschueller/peertube-android)

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Bouncingsoul1
I really like the idea of peer to peer. Unfortunately, in my jurisdiction
(Germany) this makes you the content provider, because you are also uploading
to other peers. So wouldn't use without proper VPN or other means. I guess
this makes it really hard for this kind of application to thrive, since in a
lot of country these are in legal grey area.

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zaarn
> I’d say more then 3/4 of the videos on most of the PeerTube instances I’ve
> visited are taken from YouTube. [...] It’s also a glaring admission that
> YouTube is better.

I think it's different, it's less of an admission that YT is better and rather
that all the creators are on YT at this moment.

I think PeerTube needs to find a way to watch youtube videos on the instance
(YTDL maybe?) and to monetize videos (Patreon link? Paypal? etc?)

~~~
bsder
It's also an admission that your video will wind up on YouTube whether you
want it to or not--so you need to put it up before anyone else.

The only question about YouTube is whether _you_ get the money or some scammy
uploader does.

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fatjokes
I'm a pretty tech savvy guy, and looking at the instructions on setting up a
PeerTube instance (which I guess is required to even watch videos let alone
upload) already turned me off. I can't imagine a creator wanting to film a few
videos would want to learn the details of setting up and maintaining an
instance.

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myself248
You're kidding, right?

I'm watching a video on peertube _right now_ and it took literally one click.
Nothing to install, the user experience is just like YouTube.

[https://tube.4aem.com/videos/watch/42aee781-e58a-4ffe-829e-c...](https://tube.4aem.com/videos/watch/42aee781-e58a-4ffe-829e-c6eaad24f9da)

For instance.

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voltagex_
Where are you in the world? What's your connection like? I'm on a 100 megabit
downstream (95 nominal) connection in Australia and there are often videos on
Peertube that won't load at all for me. YouTube is peered with a local Akamai
node or with my ISP and is nearly always instant. The user experience is _not_
like YouTube.

~~~
myself248
Michigan USA, cheapest package my cable provider offers, which is 30 down, 5
up.

I'm fairly new to Peertube but I haven't found any that won't load. Sometimes
they buffer a bit in the first moments, but then they're fine.

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zzzcpan
> My next problem is with theft.

Piracy is not theft. And we can't have it both ways. It's either
centralization with censorship and all kinds of enforcement of rules or
decentralization with resistance to censorship and piracy.

~~~
mrfunkedude
You are exactly right that piracy is not theft. I chose to use terms that the
common person reading it would understand. I know that this doesn't help
people understand that piracy is not theft, but I have to pick and chose my
battles.

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mrfunkedude
I just wanted to drop into the comments here and say "WOW". Thanks to Hacker
News you guys gave me the most views my little blog has ever had in the year
that it's been up.

I plan on writing more about the Fediverse in the future.

Thank you for your attention and the fun ride. I hope that you'll visit me
again.

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DoctorOetker
can we design a system which provably can not be manipulated by the status quo
(youtube and others) to cause these issues? in theory YT could be poisoning
the well with porn, some of its own lesser random videos; in order to arrange
copyright violations; analyze and exploit the lack of language filtering
etc...

I am not claiming the status quo _is proven_ to be the cause of these issues,
but I do claim that I know of no proof which proves the system to be resilient
against such manipulation. _Perhaps_ if one succeeds in designing a system
that is provably resilient in some sense, the problems would automagically
disappear?

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zzzcpan
Maybe let people create post moderated curated lists of things where anyone
can post stuff and then let anyone to subscribe to those lists. If you stop
being satisfied with curation of some lists, you unsubscribe and choose other
lists.

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anoncake
> My next problem is with theft. There are a LOT of stolen YouTube videos.

That's awful. I hope Youtube will quickly find replacements for those stolen
videos.

~~~
sschueller
Most videos on YouTube were of television and movies when they started.

The whole YouTube stars and original content came much later.

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Torgo
The videos were too short for piracy, they were capped at like five minutes
long. I used to watch videos by a legit "youtube star" named Brookers. They
also used to have reply videos, before it got clogged with spam. It used to be
a lot more social.

