
MediaGoblin – Self Hosted, Decentralized​ Alt to YouTube, Flickr, SoundCloud - huntermeyer
https://mediagoblin.org
======
rglullis
Curious to see this here, given that I've been trying to set up some of these
"decentralized services" at my home servers and figuring out if it is really
possible to replace the common mainstream services.

So far, I installed my own Matrix server (synapse), my own XMPP (ejabberd),
yesterday I got semi-happy with my mastodon setup, and now I was just
finishing some tests with ownCloud to see if I could replace Dropbox.

MediaGoblin is on my list of services to setup. I ran a basic deployment and
checked some other instances of it before, but I didn't put it higher on my
priority list because to me it looks like it focus too much on being a
"community-driven website" instead of providing a solid service as a media-
hosting/publishing/catalog system.

To me it looks like they are shooting for the wrong level of "decentralization
granularity". Each instance of these services are aiming for a "community",
and think that the people use the mainstream tools because they don't want
to/won't manage the server.

The point they seem to miss is that this only creates another type of top-down
organization. It would be MUCH easier for them to focus on a "single-user"
system, and start from the point that the communication will work when the
applications talk with each other.

To me this is why Diaspora failed, and Wordpress is still such a big part of
the internet.

Another thing I noticed: the projects that really focused on separating client
from server produced much better results in terms of UI/UX. With Matrix, I
just had to setup the server, and then I could have the riot app just point to
my instance. If by any chance a better client comes around, my instance would
be untouched.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I just had a brief look at Mastodon, and it appears to have the same humongous
flaw that Diaspora has. No events management.

What the hell? That is _the_ main feature required in a social network, after
the ability to see each others comments. People want to organise their lives
using the graph that their social network provides.

Is anyone aware of a distributed or federated open source social network which
provides event management functionality? I would love to hear about it if you
have... Gallery functionality would come in handy too.

~~~
jeena
I have events on my website
[https://jeena.net/events/](https://jeena.net/events/) plain HTML marked up
with h-event
[http://microformats.org/wiki/h-event](http://microformats.org/wiki/h-event)
and I can receive RSVPs with help of
[https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/](https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/)

It was fairly easy to implement, the only problem is that not many of the
people I know have software which lets them RSVP too, therefor I also
connected it to Facebook.

~~~
mediaserf
Nice! what are you using for the Photos page on your site?

~~~
jeena
Basically the same, h-entry and u-photo with microformats and p-author to show
that I made the photo.

------
Veratyr
I think to be able to say you're a "decentralized alternative to YouTube,
Flickr, SoundCloud", you really need some way to search across all the servers
in the network or at least interact with them and as far as I can tell, that
doesn't exist. In the tour there's not even any mention of decentralization
that I can see.

Is there something I'm missing?

Also in terms of self hosting, something I'd really like is the ability to
point it at a pile of files and have it ingest them in place. Any idea whether
that's possible?

~~~
grault
Wrt search, I guess it's seen as an orthogonal problem and meant to be dealt
with by indexing / search services..

~~~
Veratyr
In that case though, why claim to be "decentralized"? That to me means one
large, interconnected network, which one can access through any of its
members. Mastodon is decentralized; you can make an account on any server and
search and follow users on any other server without leaving. Bittorrent is
decentralized, you can grab info from the DHT then connect to peers and
download stuff.

If it depends on an index/searching service, how is the network itself any
more decentralized than say an FTP server? I wouldn't call FTP decentralized.

------
anderspitman
I'm still waiting for an open source self-hosted alternative to Google Drive.
Even just the basic functionality of a file browser, image thumbnails, photo
gallery, and video player would be fantastic. Many such projects exist, and
maybe I'm just lazy, but I really don't want to have to set up a PHP server in
order to run such a thing. I would love something like Syncthing where you
download a compiled Go binary, start up the service, and configure it through
your browser.

I started implementing something like this myself but didn't make it very far.
The fear of eventually running out of space or having privacy/security issues
on Drive hasn't produced enough pain for me to really do anything yet.

~~~
Feld0
I highly recommend Seafile for this purpose. It was far more performant and
reliable than ownCloud when I tried it, and more self-contained.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I installed Seafile and ran it for a while, but what I didn't like is that in
order to get to the file on the server, I had to use fuse and, well, I just
didn't want to have to do that. Picky, I get it, but we all have preferences.

I've run ownCloud for some time now and I don't see the reliability issues
that some people claim. I am running it on TS140 and not something small like
a RPi, so maybe that makes the difference.

~~~
mysterydip
I've run ownCloud for about half a year to sync my dev files to a hosted
server. For a while, everything was great. What happened for me at least was
if I was saving a project while ownCloud was syncing, there was a chance of it
messing up and then requiring a full resync of my dev folder (a not
insignificant amount of data).

The first time it happened I shrugged it off as a fluke. The second time I
became gunshy and would disable it any time I was working, then enable it
after. Not a big inconvenience but a hassle and something I had to remember.
After a while I stopped using it. YMMV, of course.

------
rchrd2
MediaGoblin is available on Sandstorm (eg one click install):
[https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/70awyqss6jq2gkz7dwzsnvumzr0725...](https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/70awyqss6jq2gkz7dwzsnvumzr07256pzdt3hda9acfuxwh6uh7h)

~~~
simplehuman
It is very outdated.
[https://wiki.mediagoblin.org/EasyDeployment#Sandstorm](https://wiki.mediagoblin.org/EasyDeployment#Sandstorm)

~~~
dublinben
It would certainly be better if the version on Sandstorm was more up to date,
but the current version works. If you're just interested in trying it out with
minimal hassle.

~~~
simplehuman
What's the point of that? There is a live demo in the media goblin site if I
want to try.

~~~
dublinben
The "try a demo right now" link on the MediaGoblin homepage is just a link to
Sandstorm.

------
kemonocode
I always seem to remember this project sort of limping along, only to forget
it a while after as even though I'm an artist and I could make some use of it,
the setup is far too much of a trouble when a Wordpress blog would do the
trick for sharing my works just fine. Maybe it needs something akin to what
happened with GNU/Social and Mastodon to be thrown into the limelight.

~~~
wyldfire
I don't have much experience with it but IMO mediagoblin might suit small
organizations slightly better than individuals. It's probably best for folks
who want their cycling club, makerspace, HOA, scouts troop, university, etc to
be able to share media without being subject to content restrictions, silly
communities, etc.

~~~
CM30
My question however is whether said people would be technically capable of
getting it running. I mean, it's simple for those with experience in running a
server or unmanaged VPS, who know how to run Python scripts and setup Docker
or what not. But the average person in many of these small organisations (even
the tech team) is probably confused by a simple WordPress install or even the
process of uploading files to a web hosting account.

I feel these solutions seem like they should be aimed at the people and groups
you mention, but end up seeming like they're designed for tech geeks and
programmers. They need to be made to work on cheaper hosting accounts and
installable by someone whose experience with 'tech' is clicking buttons in a
user interface.

~~~
dublinben
That sounds like a business opportunity to sell inexpensive hosted instances
of Mediagoblin. Or you can volunteer to contribute code and documentation that
makes it easier to self-host.

~~~
CM30
That's a good point. Something like WordPress.com for Mediagoblin would be
fantastic here, even if it meant paying monthly. Vanilla, GitLab and Discourse
have done really well by offering this sort of deal.

------
galacticpony2
But where's the alternative Youtube _website_?

Youtube differentiates itself by being a go-to platform, a website that people
actually visit to watch videos. Otherwise, call it an alternative to Vimeo,
which is de-facto just a video hosting platform.

~~~
CM30
Well, there's always VidMe. That's what they're trying to be, a new YouTube.

But when it comes to decentralised services... I suspect the answer is
'whatever instance connects to most of the others and draws the most traffic'.
Which raises its own issues, since [BigVideoSiteInstanceNameHere] basically
just ends up with the same problems as YouTube. Being able to control what a
large percentage of users watch on a de facto level, even if the actual
underlying system is decentralised.

------
paradite
Is this project still in active development? The release version has not
reached 1.0 but there were only a few commits in the past months:

[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/mediagoblin.git/log/](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/mediagoblin.git/log/)

~~~
paroneayea
Hi, MediaGoblin co-founder and co-maintainer here.

It's still under active development, though I've temporarily handed over the
reigns to others while I've been busy getting the federation standard we're
going to use nicely shaped up through the W3C spec process
[https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/)

That's taken up more of my last year (okay, last two years) than I expected.
I'll be back in the swing of things within the next few months. We have a
federation branch right now, but the standardization process of ActivityPub
meant that we're going to have to retool some things before its released in
1.0!

The good news is that ActivityPub is looking to be picked up by projects like
NextCloud, Mastodon, Pump.io, and quite possibly GNU Social, Diaspora,
postActiv. This means we should be able to have more federation working across
the many federated social web projects out there.

If you're interested in ActivityPub and federation generally, I highly
recommend checking out the tutorial, which is baked into the spec:
[https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#Overview](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#Overview)

In the meanwhile, Boris Bobrov (breton) has been kindly doing the main work
along maintainership while I've been preoccupied. But, I'll be back soon...
and it'll be good to be back!

~~~
mike-cardwell
I can't figure out what advantages ActivityPub has over email. It seems to
just be a way of sending messages to one or more recipients. Email already
does this. Couldn't you just stash that blob of JSON in an email body? That
way, no new servers would need to be set up; everyone already has an email
address.

~~~
reitanqild
Do you want server-to-server communication to depend on yhe mercy of spam
filters?

Or client-server communication ?

~~~
mike-cardwell
Are you talking about the spam filters that are required for email, or the
spam filters that are required for the exact same reasons with ActivityPub?

[https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#security-
spam](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#security-spam)

"Spam is a problem in any network, perhaps especially so in federated
networks. While no specific mechanism for combating spam is provided in
ActivityPub, it is recommended that servers filter incoming content both by
local untrusted users and any remote users through some sort of spam filter."

------
motters
Mediagoblin is also available as an app on Freedombone
([https://freedombone.net](https://freedombone.net))

------
TorKlingberg
I found a video on one of the example sites and opened it on mobile, iOS and
the Google Search app. The video didn't play. That is why Youtube is so
dominant. 12 years later and nobody else has figured out how to make videos
that actually play.

~~~
scriptkiddy
I figured it out. You need to store several encodings of the same file. One in
webm for most cases, and one in mp4 for all other cases. If a platform doesn't
support webm or Mp4, it probably couldn't play the video anyway.

~~~
vbernat
Then, you have to solve the problem with how to seek in a 2-hour long video.

------
xiconfjs
opened the first 3x live instances [1] and all videos required flash...

[1]
[https://wiki.mediagoblin.org/Live_instances](https://wiki.mediagoblin.org/Live_instances)

------
cdolan92
This may be off topic, but does anyone think that there is a correlation
between pop culture (Silicon Valley's Pied Piper this season) and services
like this springing up/getting more attention than normal?

~~~
somedumbguy22
I thought about this too, but it could just be something similar to blue car
syndrome[1], where I'm just noticing it now because of silicon valley.

[1] [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/153166/what-
is-t...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/153166/what-is-the-term-
for-when-you-become-more-aware-of-something)

------
con022
I am confusing with decentralized. If there is no central server, how can my
node find the first neighbor node? If there is a server maintain a nodes list,
it isn't decentralized, right?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Just have to find one, right? Then it can clue yours in on the rest. So
manually provision any neighbor, once?

------
Espionage724
For anyone interested, I have some notes on how I deploy MediaGoblin here:
[https://wiki.realmofespionage.xyz/servers:nginx:gnu_mediagob...](https://wiki.realmofespionage.xyz/servers:nginx:gnu_mediagoblin)

------
stefek99
Interview from 2013 - they have been around -
[http://redecentralize.org/interviews/2013/10/13/06-chris-
med...](http://redecentralize.org/interviews/2013/10/13/06-chris-
mediagoblin.html)

------
eco
I'm not understanding what is decentralized about it. It just looks like a
bunch of Gallery 2 installations. Do the servers interact in some way? Is the
content hosted in a decentralized fashion? I can't find anything on the
website that clarifies it.

~~~
nnutter
Decentralized != distributed.

------
criddell
This seems like the kind of thing that should be packaged to be one-click-
installed on a NAS box.

~~~
nobodyorother
You mean, like Sandstorm did?

[https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/70awyqss6jq2gkz7dwzsnvumzr0725...](https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/70awyqss6jq2gkz7dwzsnvumzr07256pzdt3hda9acfuxwh6uh7h)

~~~
criddell
Yes. Just like that, except in the format that QNAP, Synology, and other NAS
machines use.

Isn't Sandstorm basically dead at this point? I seem to recall them announcing
that the commercial side of the project had failed and they were going 100%
Open Source.

~~~
kentonv
We're still working on Sandstorm.

------
symlinkk
Why use this instead of just putting a directory on public FTP or something?

~~~
tekni5
So you can stream videos for the most part. Also you can let others upload,
make comments, etc.

------
wedesoft
If you are looking for a self-hosted video site, I can really recommend
CumulusClips. It is quite easy to setup and does the job quite well.

------
thunfisch
If you're looking for a more end-to-end solution, suitable for lecture/event
recording, processing and distribution with a more permissive license, you
might want to checkout [http://www.opencast.org](http://www.opencast.org) as
well.

------
leemailll
Reminds me of the dead gallery project and Piwigo. Any comparison with these?

------
flamedoge
BitChute is another

------
hoodoof
This looks like another way of sharing stuff that big companies don't want you
to share. I seem to recall this story not ending well in the past. And AGPL? -
such an unappealing license - it's the license for open source extremists.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Or just sharing private content you don't want the big companies to have.

~~~
EGreg
AGPL is great for letting regular people host stuff without large companies
taking over your project and giving it to their 100000000000000000 centralized
user base.

~~~
flukus
No it isn't, companies are able to do that if they want. AGPL just makes sure
those companies release their modifications to your project.

~~~
quadrangle
Yes indeed. The implication from the other poster was that companies can't
_exploit_ the project and make derivatives without sharing their source code.
That doesn't stop them, but it does make it possible for people to get the
updates, self-host or create competing instances, which is a major check on
the power that proprietary services have.

