
PeerTube: A decentralized video hosting network, based on free software - programLyrique
https://joinpeertube.org/en/
======
bringtheaction
> Please don't install PeerTube for production on a small device behind a low
> bandwidth connection (example: a Raspberry PI behind your ADSL link) because
> it could slow down the fediverse.

Sounds like PeerTube is vulnerable to a sorts of denial of service attack from
bad actors that would join and then limit the bandwidth to extreme amounts.

Hasn’t this been solved already in other P2P protocols? Couldn’t they have
built upon an existing protocol that protected them against this?

~~~
amelius
Regardless of that specific problem, it would be wise to build upon an
existing protocol (e.g. IPFS), because it would help prevent future problems
AND it would increase traction of federated content sharing. The more people
use a single protocol, the more all applications benefit in latency, speed,
availability; but also in future development.

~~~
maeln
It use ActivityPub for the federation part and WebTorrent (which just
implement the BitTorrent protocol over websocket if I remember correctly).

It is using already using existing protocol.

~~~
aiham
WebTorrent uses WebRTC, not WebSocket.

~~~
nathcd
This is the part that I find somewhat unfortunate about Peertube. This means
that only ActivityPub clients that support WebRTC will be able to access
Peertube media. Right now, I think this basically means just modern web
browsers. It bothers me somewhat that an early, potentially major ActivityPub
service is going to limit full functionality to the few existing major web
browsers. That's the opposite of what I want from a federated protocol.
(Someone correct me if I've got any of this wrong.)

Regardless, Peertube seems awesome, and I hope we keep seeing more and more
services built on ActivityPub.

~~~
rigelk
ActivityPub defines federation messages server to server and client to server.
It is not a protocol per se, and rather a message exchange standard, which
could perfectly be used only between servers, as is the case with federation
of videos between PeerTube instances, and more recently for video comment
feeds, that can interact with the larger fediverse (Hubzilla and Mastodon so
far were tested).

In no way it defines how you access media. That is defined by the use of
WebRTC, which is supported by a growing number of browsers, and anyway
provides a fallback to direct streaming (HTTP), so that any browser can
interact.

~~~
nathcd
> and anyway provides a fallback to direct streaming (HTTP), so that any
> browser can interact.

Ah, that's awesome. That definitely assuages my fears somewhat.

> [ActivityPub] In no way it defines how you access media.

ActivityStreams (which ActivityPub builds on) does define an attachment
property for messages [1]. Is this not a standard mechanism for clients to
access ActivityPub media (via the attachment's type and url)?

[1] [https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-
attach...](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-attachment)

~~~
rigelk
It is, but I don't see how web browsers would need to interact directly with
ActivityPub. That's just a way to settle on a json structure everyone will be
using in their web application (that acts as AP client), as is the case in
Mastodon.

Here with PeerTube the client interface doesn't interact with AP to watch
videos or get them. It just requests the list directly to the server.

------
daveid
PeerTube also federates using the W3C ActivityPub protocol, so Mastodon users
can follow PeerTube channels and comment on videos as they would respond to
other statuses :)

~~~
Arkanosis
Exactly:
[https://peertube.cpy.re/videos/watch/da2b08d4-a242-4170-b32a...](https://peertube.cpy.re/videos/watch/da2b08d4-a242-4170-b32a-4ec8cbdca701)

~~~
alex_duf
really nice!

------
sametmax
> PeerTube is a free/libre software financed by a French non-profit
> organization: Framasoft.

That's a very, very good news.

Framasoft is one of the oldest, most trustworthy and passionate FOSS actor
I've met in my life.

They are basically the reason I became a computer scientist.

~~~
mlinksva
Please write this up in longer form (or point out where you have already) if
you get a chance! I'm vaguely aware that the French FOSS community is possibly
the strongest (which includes having strong institutions like Framasoft) in
the world, but know hardly any details, and I think very few people in the
English speaking FOSS world even have that vague awareness.

~~~
sametmax
Well basically framasoft is a mature community (created 17 years ago) around
free software.

First, they were just a portal
([https://framasoft.org/](https://framasoft.org/)) listing good FOSS you could
download for windows and a forum to help each other.

It was the best, most stable and reliable source for that kind of info at the
time, and lead a lot of people gaining trust in FOSS, trying out Linux, or
like me, dig more and start programming.

Eventually they got to write informative and engaged blog posts. They always
took the time to explain why and what, and I'm very grateful for that. It's
transparent attitude I respect. Because of this they got echoed by framous
voices such as Tristan Nitot (from Mozilla at the time) and Sebsauvage (pretty
much the most famous nerd blog in the country).

Among their projects, they made the "portable" versions of free software quite
popular, to the extend of creating a USB key where you could store your fav
stuff (OOo, Firefox, vlc, etc) and carry a decent working environment anywhere
you went, with a launcher on the systray.

Then they got involved politically, especially against the DADVSI law in
France. They also teamed up with "la quadrature du net", a quite tenacious
group trying to defend the free Web (that teamed up with wikimedia :)). The
impressive feat here is the fact they are a small team, with very low budget,
but yet managed to involve the "Conseil d'Etat" and the "Conseil
constutionnel". I like the fact they did it every time in a formal, respectful
manner. In politics, it's quite hard to do.

The last accomplishment of framasoft is to be alive. It's all about the
constant work they've done, again and again, as they didn't have major actors
to help them or a big source of income.

Today they host a load of open source web services to offer alternative to
google agenda, google doc, dropbox, twitter, etc. In total 27 ranging from
doodle clones to pastebins. The service are not as good as the original ones,
but they work damn well and are free, using open formats.

I make sure I donate to them once in a while even if I don't go to their site
that much anymore. But I do use their agenda, syncing it on thunderbird and my
android phone.

------
nyxxie
I've always wondered why people want to decentralize hosting of content. This,
IMO, is a much harder task which leads to such restrictions as

> Please don't install PeerTube for production on a small device behind a low
> bandwidth connection (example: a Raspberry PI behind your ADSL link) because
> it could slow down the fediverse.

Why not simply decentralize the content index and let other people worry about
storage for videos? When I go to Youtube, I'm there because it's a platform
where I can find a large variety of entertainment without putting any effort
into it, not because Google is hosting them. I'm picturing the backend here
being a decentralized database of video metadata (including where and how it
is hosted), and some sort of frontend where every video in the index can be
viewed through a unified player.

If we're trying to give oppressed people the ability to host their
controversial content, just have them host it behind Tor or over the
bittorrent network and then add it to the index. Otherwise we could just let
people link to videos on other video hosting sites or on their own personal
websites.

~~~
ManlyBread
Content discovery sucks nowadays. The search results bring up mostly bigger
channels instead of relevant ones. Recommendations are based on view history
and likes, which means you get more of the same instead of someting new. I
constantly get videos I've seen already in my recommendations, these stay
there for weeks until I click on them.

The major feature I used for discovery is long gone - it was the ability to
add video responses, which allowed me to not only find small, niche channels
with great stuff but also built a sense of community. I don't get why did they
remove this,but ever since they did the site just never felt the same.

~~~
Consultant32452
I've noticed a growing pattern in Youtube land. I'll watch a video of of some
event, maybe a talk given by a professor. Then a week or so later I'll get a
suggestion to watch the same exact talk which has been uploaded by a different
user, perhaps with some minor video modification to trip up duplication
filters or something. It's really lowering the quality of my suggestion feed.

~~~
Houshalter
At least you are getting content from other channels. It seems like all my
recommendations are to videos from the last few channels I have watched. Never
anything I haven't heard of before. Even most of the channels I subscribe to
never show up in my feed.

It's the old exploration vs exploitation tradeoff. Most recommendation
algorithms are highly optimized for exploitation and not exploration.

~~~
flamedoge
this is what frustrates me

------
adrusi
It looks like this doesn't offer any way for video creators to get paid?

Right now a lot of major video creators are looking to leave YouTube because
YouTube is marking their videos as ineligible for monetization. That's the
market you want to capture if you want to succeed as a YouTube alternative.
Sites like d.tube and steemit.com and bitchute.com are offering this. Getting
major video producers with a following on YouTube to use your alternative
platform is how you get enough viewers to achieve critical mass. They won't
come if they can't get paid.

Now there's a problem here, because the average YouTube channel suffering from
demonetization is a right-wing political channel, and attracting too many of
them is a great way to make no one else want to come to your platform. These
aren't the _only_ video producers who are suffering from demonetization; the
most egregious case I know of is science education channel CodysLab[1], which
has been barred from uploading new videos a couple times on account of
violating youtube's content guidelines for microwaving crickets to show that
crickets are too small to be hurt by microwave radiation, and using black
powder explosives.

A federated network might be better able to handle this problem, giving the
right-wing creators a platform on some instances, but not on others. But if
peertube offers no monetization options, then it will never compete with
YouTube.

[1]
[https://youtube.com/user/thecodyreeder](https://youtube.com/user/thecodyreeder)

~~~
peoplewindow
_attracting too many of them is a great way to make no one else want to come
to your platform_

Perhaps that's a feature and not a bug. After all, judging by the last US
election such people are in a slight minority anyway.

And why is YouTube whacking those channels specifically - because left wing
social justice types systematically try to wipe out conservative thought
wherever they find it. It's a private sector form of the behavior communist
countries always see. Do you _want_ those people following you to the next
place you host your videos? Or would you rather leave them to sit and stew in
their nicely whitewashed PC groupthink?

I think the real issue with your idea is that revenue streams from ads aren't
that large, and anyway, advertisers are extremely sensitive to being targeted
by witch hunts, which is why you see left wingers engage in so many of them
against advertisers. I'd leave video authors to arrange for their own
sponsorships; they can surely do it if the right messaging framework is in
place.

~~~
adrusi
_There’s an unfortunate corollary to this, which is that if you try to create
a libertarian paradise, you will attract three deeply virtuous people with a
strong committment to the principle of universal freedom, plus millions of
scoundrels. Declare that you’re going to stop holding witch hunts, and your
coalition is certain to include more than its share of witches._

 _So while some small percent of Reddit’s average users moved over, a very
large percent of its witches did. Sometimes the witchcraft was nothing worse
than questioning Reddit’s political consensus. Other times, it was harassment,
hate groups, and creepy porn._

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-
centrali...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centralized-
web/)

When one platform (youtube) starts banning/demonetizing certain people, and
you create a new platform that guarantees free expression, that new platform
is going to get swarmed by the people who were banned by the incumbent
platform. If YouTube's methid of selecting people be banned/demonetized is
reasonably in line with what the average viewer dislikes (no necessarily what
they would want banned), then when the new platform gets flooded with content
from those banned from YouTube, the average viewer will find little to like on
the platform.

Many people made their living off of YouTube ad revenue. Still do. You might
be right that it's not the best source of income for the typical producer.

However, right now, a lot of producers are angry at YouTube for their changes
to their ad policy. Now's the time to drive a large number of big content
producers off of YouTube and onto your new platform, because they are
_actively searching_ for a new one. But they're motivated by the loss of their
ad revenue, so they're not going to be interested in a platform that doesn't
pay out ad revenue at all, that doesn't address their concerns.

------
arsalanb
Youtube is more than just a tool, it's a store of culture almost. Imagine
Youtube suddenly disappeared. A wealth of information and video would be lost,
like rare videos which are only on youtube. Sure, someone somewhere will have
a copy but on the whole you can't access them seamlessly like you can with
Youtube.

Of late I have began to think this is too much power for a company to hold. I
trust Youtube to not fuck up so bad that all videos are gone, but I would
sleep a bit sounder at night if it was decentralised.

~~~
phkahler
If you're worried about rare videos going away, don't just watch them on
YouTube. Archive them yourself. You are the one who sees value in them, so do
your part to keep their storage decentralized. Just a thought.

~~~
sinatra
I never understand this “If you’re so worried, take action” argument. We all
have concerns about thousands of things. I’m concerned about kids’ education
in the whole world, I’m concerned about animals getting killed for fun, I’m
concerned about Comcast being my only realistic ISP, I’m concerned about
thousands more such things. I should be able to have and show concern even if
I can’t actively do much about them due to my focus on other, even greater
concerns (even if they’re selfish concerns like taking care of my family).

~~~
superkuh
You don't understand him suggesting a completely straightforward and easy
solution to the problem?

If you don't want a solution and just want to talk about it that's fine. But
his comment was productive and useful.

I use youtube-dl almost daily to archive interesting videos locally.

~~~
sinatra
The original post said, "(YouTube is) a store of culture almost. A wealth of
information and video would be lost, like rare videos which are only on
youtube."

Archiving a store of _culture_ and almost infinite rare videos is definitely
not a straightforward and easy solution. Yes, you can save few interesting
videos locally. But, that's not the point of the original post.

~~~
superkuh
You gotta be the change you want to see even if you know it won't be enough to
completely solve everything.

------
tom_mellior
I clicked around some videos on some random server I chose from the list, and
in many cases a video's preview picture has nothing to do with the video. As
in, it never visibly appears in the actual video. Or it's the very first frame
and not representative of the rest of the video. That opens up all sorts of
clickbait/abuse issues.

I don't know how YouTube deals with generating a representative preview image,
but the result is certainly better.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
This was an issue at one point with YouTube as well. Heck, it's still an
issue, with most thumbnails designed with emoting people, arrows, and words
designed to increase click rates.

However, this kind of things _does_ increase click rates for these videos. For
a platform designed to get views, is that really a bad thing?

~~~
tom_mellior
It will not get views if users feel ripped off.

~~~
johndough
The users will feel ripped off after they have seen the video, in which case
it is already too late.

~~~
tom_mellior
The users will feel serially ripped off after they have seen three such
videos, in which case it is already too late. Too late to convince them to
ever come back to a platform with such an offering.

~~~
jobigoud
> Too late to convince them to ever come back to a platform with such an
> offering

It's the exact same problem on YouTube with clickbait thumbnails and titles.
It doesn't frustrate people off the entire platform, just the channels that
are repeat offenders.

------
cobbzilla
It still possible for creators to get paid without built-in monetization.
Sponsorships, patreon, etc.

Agencies will emerge to represent popular YouTubers who move to other
platforms if there is sufficient advertiser demand for the (presumably
sizable) audience drawn to the content.

In fact, it's probably better to decouple monetization from distribution, at
least initially. It's another layer on top. We are just beginning to
standardize social protocols, let's let them develop naturally.

------
0x4f3759df
There's also bitchute, d.tube, dlive.io, the latter two being on the steem
network. dlive supports live streaming so I think its gaining a lot of
traction.

~~~
drngdds
Bitchute? They really didn't think that name through, huh

------
saverio-murgia
Does this support ads and if not, what's the value proposition for content
creatos other than maybe less censorship?

~~~
jhauris
The PeerTube FAQ directly states that they do not.[0] They give the reasoning
(with some numbers) that small to medium sized creators are better off getting
community support through patreon or similar.

0:
[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/FAQ.md#a...](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/FAQ.md#are-
you-going-to-support-advertisements)

------
dotsh
So developers are building "social media" for developers with famous 30 minut
install, make new instance or manage it by yourself kind of thing.

Typical social media users will never get into fediverse as they still are
using shortcut to google.com as their "internet connection".

But great that technology is moving forward.

~~~
nightpool
One developer or sysadmin running an instance can support hundreds of non-
technical users per server. This is a model that's already validated by
mastodon, which has >1M registered users across thousands of servers (and ~40k
weekly active users)

~~~
dotsh
And who writes on Mastodon? Mostly devs or Trump? Maybe Obama? Ellen? No? So
no one will use it, ever. I'm not against technology as it is great, but
looking on this as a normal user it's not appealing to me. Mastodon is like
old fashion phpBB forums 15 years ago, closed groups who talk with each other.
;)

Mastodon will need to find business model sooner or later as internet isn't
free as in beer because beer costs money and you can't handle 100m users with
donations.

~~~
ColanR
> Mastodon is like old fashion phpBB forums 15 years ago, closed groups who
> talk with each other. ;)

As long as the members are part of several disparate groups, that's probably
more of a good thing. Closer, tighter communities.

Also, I thought the bandwidth came from the users, since it's decentralized?

~~~
dotsh
People still need to pay for it. FSF would also die of hunger if it were not
for people donating them money they have to earn first... so nothing is free.

------
beedrillzzzzz
[https://D.tube/](https://D.tube/) is another one!

~~~
hbakhtiyor
not open source!

~~~
detaro
what parts are missing?

~~~
jacobush
UX

------
d--b
Can anyone comment on how this works space-wise? Does that mean that each node
will carry a copy of the whole database? Is there some geography-based
sharding or something?

Cause I won't run a node of that if that means I'll need some petabytes of
space and an awfully large bandwidth.

~~~
quietlemon
> Does that mean that each node will carry a copy of the whole database?

It is specified in the project README. Your server will only host/share its
own videos:

[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube#backend](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube#backend)

As a server admin you may subscribe to other servers to have their videos
presented on your server as well, but those remote servers would be in charge
of seeding the content (each server is an actual Bittorrent tracker, it
seems).

The subscription system is not ready just yet, it should be implemented in the
coming weeks/month. If some people feel like contributing code… :-)

------
wyck
Unfortunately these things don't work because the general public needs
something simple, centralised, rich in content, and which has the momentum of
actual people using it. Technology doesn't help, it's about timing it the
right application at the right time.

------
darkstar999
More ISPs are going with bandwidth caps. I don't think things like this will
take off.

~~~
anigbrowl
It's a challenge, but it might be helped along by mesh networking.

~~~
woah
www.altheamesh.com

~~~
anigbrowl
Oh yes, I saw that working a few weeks ago. Quite promising.

------
seany
Seems like integrating this with something like IPFS would be a good match.

------
ggggtez
> Issue 226: Be GDPR compliant.

I had a good laugh at that. Does anyone really think this service is going to
be competitive in terms of privacy to what a centralized provider can do?

------
rcMgD2BwE72F
[https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances](https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances)

------
wemdyjreichert
This wont work really well until everyone has fast fiber links. Streaming
needs a seamless connection, unlike normal downloads.

------
stevedekorte
It looks like it would be (as with Mastodon) more accurate to call this
federated instead of decentralized.

------
LifeLiverTransp
How and by what is content moderation applied to this? If not at all- what
does prevent the competition- from oploading content disapproved by society,
and then smear the network as a host for pirated content, snuff and illegal
pornography? Is there some jury duty for everyone- so every third video, you
must watch something flagged for moderation, and judge it?

