
PeerTube 2.1 - jrepinc
https://joinpeertube.org/news#release-2-1-0
======
dragonsh
This is federated video hosting services like XMPP designed for federated
communication infrastructure.

Player use webtorrent to use BitTorrent protocol for video streaming. This
system gives limited control to the company or individual hosting the
federated server to manage videos hosted on their platform only.

The only issue I see in this service is same faced by email and XMPP servers.
So hopefully the federated server is not controlled by few players like
happened in case of email and in spite of being federated controlled by large
players like google, in another instance WhatsApp and google both used XMPP
and removed support for federation when they became sufficiently large.

~~~
badrabbit
Email is not dominated by a few players unless you think email is strictly
free webmail and even then there are like a dozen of them.

~~~
basch
If you combine corporate hosted email and free webmail, the vast majority of
marketshare is very likely Microsoft, Google, Verizon. Would you honestly
believe they host less than 80% of SaaS email mailboxes between the three of
them?

~~~
tinus_hn
Aren’t most of these unavailable in China?

~~~
basch
Same thing in China? Tencent and Netease probably have +80% of marketshare?
Microsoft has presence there as well both on the Hotmail and Office 365 sides
of the coin.

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snisarenko
Hey guys. If you just recently discovered the fediverse, and feel the friction
of exploring it. I am working on a couple of aggregators for mastodon,
pixelfed, and maybe eventually peertube.

[https://mastodonia.club](https://mastodonia.club)

[https://pixelfed.club](https://pixelfed.club)

~~~
badrabbit
Why do they all want an email?

~~~
snisarenko
I am a bit confused by your question. I only ask for email if you want to be
notified about a launch, or provide feedback. Both of those use-cases are
difficult without a point of contact.

~~~
badrabbit
I tried using fediverse services, they all want an email to sign up,tried
dozens. All email providers need a phone to register these days and getting a
phone means either I get a burner or use my real number which anyone can pay a
service to find out just about everything about me.

~~~
snisarenko
Ok .... I am doing my best here, and assuming this is a comment in good faith,
and not a troll post (following HN guidelines and all).

So, you are trying to join a federated social network. But, you feel that
providing an email (literally the first federated social network on the
internet) is a burden ? And you feel this is a burden because you don't want
to give up a phone number to get an email account.

I believe protonmail has a free tier, and doesn't ask for a phone number:

[https://protonmail.com/signup](https://protonmail.com/signup)

And you can also pay for the premium tier with bitcoin.

[https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/paying-with-
bi...](https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/paying-with-bitcoin/)

So hopefully that gets you out of a pickle where you want to have an email
while maximizing privacy.

~~~
badrabbit
So first,why would what I said be a trollpost? Because you disagree?

Second, protonmail requires a phone or credit card to sign up(wasn't the case
before). You can pay for protonmail using btc and i was lucky to have an
account before their sms verification requirement but I don't wish to use that
address.

Third, why the hell do I need an email address to join any service? I can list
many reasons why I don't want to use email ,privacy being only one small
reason. Let go of email and sms,please! I emplore you, so much is at stake!
You can use email all you want but free your users from needing it.

Why do I need an email for mastodon? Why???? It's literally a communication
platform you can send me messages on? You can make a backup email (or backup
mastodon account) for recovery although there are more secure options? Why do
you insist on demanding people depend on a technology from the early 1980s to
use new technology today? Why do I need burner phones and bitcoin wallets
fudned using cash to join a free federated service? I use to be able to join
an irc network,forums or even email itself without everyone and their mother
knowing my phone,address, work place,associates,demographic info,etc...

Why can't you give it a break?

~~~
snisarenko
Hey man, I didn't mean no offense. I don't disagree, I respect people who want
privacy. It just seems like you are a person who takes their privacy "extra"
seriously, and I just wasn't sure if it was a joke or not (most people on the
internet have an email address). There is nothing wrong with people who go the
next level of privacy, just don't encounter them very often so kudos to you on
that front.

I understand your frustration from a privacy perspective. But I did not create
mastodon. You may want to submit an issue on mastodon's github to ask for a
non-email registration setting, and make your case why its important for
privacy.

[https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon](https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon)

But I also want to say that you are an outlier of the average user on the
internet (most of whom have an e-mail address). I am sure that the guy who
created mastodon, didn't add e-mail in the registration out of spite for
privacy. He was following a common patter for registrations that works for 95%
of people on the internet.

Going back to the discussion of creating anonymous email address. I didn't
know that proton mail requires phone number (haven't used it before, just
heard good things about it). I did not realize the state of email
registrations across the web (haven't had create a new email account in a
while). Your last option would be to just use those throw away email services,
that generate a random email address, and let you receive some emails on that
address.

Here is an example: [https://temp-mail.org/](https://temp-mail.org/)

------
FisDugthop
I am still worried about privacy, and it seems like the design of PeerTube is
no longer flexible enough to consider making the desired improvements. In
particular, it sounds like peers can still know which videos somebody has
requested.

~~~
danShumway
In Firefox, under about:config, disable `media.peerconnection.enabled`. You
should consider doing that anyway if you're worried about IP leaks because in
some cases peer connections can unmask your IP address behind a VPN.

I'm in the midst of switching my hosting off of Youtube and on to Peertube. I
don't run Google analytics or any ads on my sites, I make sure that most of my
stuff can work without Javascript. I'm even looking into dropping Cloudflare
so I can get rid of their remaining cookie. I believe that people have a
fundamental, unalienable right to hide their identities online[0]. Because of
that, my perspective on Peertube is... complicated. I don't dismiss the
concern about peer-to-peer privacy, I think it's a real issue. However, I
think those (valid) concerns are outweighed by the following:

A) PeerTube is still probably better for user's privacy than Youtube, and
Peertube is a more feasible alternative to Youtube than anything else I've
seen.

B) Using a VPN and flipping a few simple config options gets around the issue,
which, as I'll get to below, you should be doing anyway.

C) Forcing people to care about their IP addresses in general is probably a
good thing. People are generally dismissive of the fact that they leak their
IP addresses to every site they visit, and that some of those sites will then
leak their IP addresses to the general public[1]. If Peertube gets people to
care about that, then maybe it's a good thing?

D) Peer-to-peer networking has really big benefits for bandwidth and
reliability, and is going to be a core asset in getting decentralized
technology to compete with centralized alternatives. I'm not willing to give
that technology up, even if it has privacy implications. My perspective is we
just have to deal with it, and preferably we have to deal with it in a generic
way that can be easily applied on top of services like Peertube. I lean
towards the opinion that forcing the issue is, again, probably a good thing in
the long term.

I want to cycle back around to point C. If you're really worried about these
IP leaks, I'm not going to say you're wrong. I think that's a valid concern.
However, I will say that if you're really worried about these IP leaks, and
you're not worried about regular web browsing without a VPN/Tor, then you
probably don't have a complete grasp on the total scope of the problem. If
you're already taking reasonable steps to protect your IP (as far as I know)
Peertube won't be exposing you to any additional risks.

[0]: [https://anewdigitalmanifesto.com/#right-to-
hide](https://anewdigitalmanifesto.com/#right-to-hide)

[1]: [https://danshumway.com/blog/gamasutra-
vulnerabilities/](https://danshumway.com/blog/gamasutra-vulnerabilities/)

~~~
rolandog
Thanks for the informative write-up and explanation.

------
viraptor
Something I still can't figure out is: If I want to explicitly provide a
mirror for videos of a specific account (or maybe just a specific list of
videos), is there an app that can do it? Or is the website the only P2P
implementation right now?

~~~
the8472
In general P2P means that if you want to run a "server" for some content then
all you do have to run is another peer that happens to have that content. That
said, p2p _in browsers_ is comically crippled, so the general rule may not
apply here.

~~~
hanniabu
> p2p in browsers is comically crippled

Is that because of speed or some other reason?

~~~
rjeli
Security

------
webappguy
Fix the site, I left within 20seconds and that's being generous. Immediately
have what it is, does, or why I want to read more. Fix the pixelated logo top
left.

