
PeerTube v2 - jeremiem
https://framablog.org/2019/11/12/peertube-has-worked-twice-as-hard-to-free-your-videos-from-youtube/
======
mcjiggerlog
I really want to like peertube but I think its UX, at least where it stands
now, is going to hold it back from ever challenging youtube.

I use youtube a lot, and for a huge range of topics. I don't have any interest
in creating an account on a niche-specific instance and I think the average
user who doesn't even understand what federalization does even less. However,
I literally don't even understand how to make an account on what, as far I can
tell, is supposed to be the go-to instance -
[https://peertube.social](https://peertube.social). If there's no main
platform where you can watch and discover general content then there's nothing
that you can point new users to.

As a developer, if you want to host a niche video site, then peertube looks
great. As a user, if you want to move off of youtube then I don't think this
is how you're going to do that.

~~~
Spivak
I think hosting a niche video site is more PT’s speed anyway.

There are plenty of video makers that have an audience that would follow them
them to a new platform and PT is one way to do that and (possibly) keep more
of the cut that YT is currently taking now.

As long as YT stays dominant they’re always going to have the advantage of
availability and discovery so it’s honestly not worth competing for makers on
that front.

~~~
0xffff2
> keep more of the cut that YT is currently taking now.

Keep more of what cut? AFAICT, YouTube creators make money from two primary
sources: YouTube ads and Patreon. The latter is independent of YouTube (i.e.
YouTube doesn't get a cut). The former seems very closely tied to YouTube. How
would an independent creator even go about sourcing ads to show on their
independent site? Do they want to put in the effort? Would they really have
enough leverage to get paid substantially more than their cut of YouTube's
ads?

~~~
dwild
> How would an independent creator even go about sourcing ads to show on their
> independent site? Do they want to put in the effort?

I'm pretty sure networks on Youtube are able to provide alternative ads on
channels part of their networks already.

Any Youtuber can also put bake ads directly in their videos too, all the big
ones already do that either in sponsorship, or literally as ads (see Linus
Tech Tips as a reference).

So essentially PeerTube doesn't add anything in revenue, it only remove
Youtube ads network (which can provide quite a bit of money without any effort
in ads).

------
mikece
The peer-to-peer storage and sharing of video files isn't the hard part: it's
the ability to search for and discover content that makes YouTube compelling
in my opinion. Are any of these p2p YouTube replacements presenting a
compelling way to search/discover content in a distributed way? Or if the
search index is centralized, do any of them have a compelling model for
staying funded without selling everyone's search/catalog information to data
brokers?

~~~
jasode
_> Are any of these p2p YouTube replacements presenting a compelling way to
search/discover content in a distributed way?_

Being "distributed" over p2p/federated architecture _opposes_ the end-user
convenience of search/discovery/ranking/recommendations because of _speed-of-
light_ limitations. I wrote a previous comment about this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17578332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17578332)

Also, the previous last reply by _posting2fast_ of a partial-centralized
server doesn't really replace Youtube because his proposed idea creates _new
problems_ of spam videos and untrusted/fake videos. E.g. the central index of
metadata says "www.johndoehomeserver.com" has a tutorial video for Algebra but
when you actually stream the video from "johndoehomeserver.com", you get a
spam video for Viagra instead of math instruction. Therefore, users will
naturally gravitate toward the centralized servers that have _both the
metadata and the actual video content._ This emergent group behavior of
preferences would end up recreating another "Youtube"-like clone.

p2p architecture and torrents works well for things like pirated Photoshop or
ripped Marvel Avengers movies because the users _already have the content 's
title _preloaded_ in their brain_ and therefore a centralized index for
discovery/serendipity of unknown content isn't necessary.

~~~
tiborsaas
It does not necessarily oppose it. All there needs to be done is to expose a
static, daily generated JSON file that contains all videos on the instance.
This has nothing to do with the speed of light.

Anyone then could build a search index and build a good search experience.

To combat spam, instances should reveal up/downvotes to indicate quality, I
guess your fake math video would not get much love from the community.

~~~
jasode
_> This has nothing to do with the speed of light._

Please take extra care to correctly parse what I actually wrote in response to
the gp. Yes, speed-of-light is still a limitation based on the gp's constraint
of _" search/discovery in a _distributed_ way"_ which means the search
algorithm _avoids central servers_ and loops through a bunch of remote p2p
nodes to parse a bunch of exposed JSON manifest files.

If instead, the search algorithm loops through data in a cached index server,
that's no longer "search in a distributed way" that the gp was originally
wondering about. That's the particular point I was responding to.

 _> Anyone then could build a search index and build a good search
experience._

Now, as to the issue with that "cache index server" that pre-parses the JSON
files...

The cache server that _also contains the actual video data_ will naturally
_attract the most users_ because when they hit the "play" button on their
smartphone, the video starts immediately instead of waiting or suffering
stuttering from somebody's flakey home video server.

So, the index server with the "good experience" as perceived by users will be
the one that also includes the actual videos -- basically acts as a CDN -- and
this emergent behavior of user preferences defeats the decentralized ideals of
p2p video.

We see that p2p of things like illegal software already works and is proven.
However, p2p of mainstream videos has massive technical hurdles that oppose
how _typical users_ like to discover content and play them with immediate
gratification.

~~~
danShumway
> If instead, the search algorithm loops through data in a cached index
> server, that's no longer "search in a distributed way" that the gp was
> originally wondering about.

So DNS isn't distributed because my computer caches queries?

I think this is arguing semantics rather than practicalities. Centralization
isn't binary -- it's a continuum, and we care about it because of the benefits
it provides, not because we think it's an end in and of itself. What we care
about is the ability to aggregate search results from multiple places, to
bypass search if we have a specific video URL that's being shared, and to
build our own search engines without running into copyright problems.

If all of those goals can be accomplished with a caching server, then does
anyone actually care if it's _technically_ decentralized?

> So, the index server with the "good experience" as perceived by users will
> be the one that also includes the actual videos -- basically acts as a CDN
> -- and this emergent behavior of user preferences defeats the decentralized
> ideals of p2p video.

My reading of this argument is I might as well just host my blog on Medium,
because Google search is just another point of centralization. And after all,
for speed reasons users will prefer to use a search engine that hosts both the
blog and the search results -- so eventually Google search is definitely going
to lose to Medium anyway.

But of course Medium isn't going to unseat Google, because in the real world
speed improvements are relative, and at a certain point users stop caring, or
at least other concerns like range of accessible content and network effects
begin to matter a lot more.

~~~
jasode
_> So DNS isn't distributed because my computer caches queries?_

Again, I'm not talking about a _technical_ engineering component. I'm talking
about _users aggregate behaviors_. Please see my other reply of how we seem to
be talking at different abstraction levels.

 _> Centralization isn't binary -- it's a continuum, and we care about it
because of the benefits it provides, not because we think it's an end in and
of itself._

Right, but that's not what I'm arguing. I'm talking about centralization as a
_emergent phenomenon_ that bypasses the ideals decentralized protocols that
the protocol's designers didn't intend.

 _> If all of those goals can be accomplished with a caching server, then does
anyone actually care if it's technically decentralized?_

I guess I don't understand the premise then because if that were true, why
would the adjective _" distributed"_ even be mentioned in the question _"
search/discovery in a _distributed_ way?"_ To me, something about _distributed
/decentralized_ as a characteristic in the technical implementation is very
important to the person asking the question.

EDIT: here's another example of that type of "search without central indexing
server" question:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20282397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20282397)

~~~
danShumway
> I'm talking about users aggregate behaviors.

So am I.

For example, Github currently hosts the majority of Git repositories online,
and I've heard people argue that this means Git isn't really decentralized,
because the user behavior is to stick everything into a central repository on
a central server. But when Microsoft bought Github, lots of people migrated to
Gitlab, and (issues notwithstanding) it was easy for them to do so because of
Git's distributed architecture. Git was decentralized _enough_ that pivoting
from a bad event was still way easier than it would have been with a different
architecture.

When I talk about decentralization as a practical concern, I'm not worried
about users aggregating around good services. I'm worried about whether the
architecture supports moving away from or augmenting those services if
something goes wrong in the future.

And what I mean when I talk about centralization as a continuum is that the
social aggregated behaviors you're worried about are still strictly better
under a PeerTube system than they are under a Youtube system -- so there's no
point in bashing PeerTube just because it doesn't solve literally every
problem.

If I'm removed from a centralized PeerTube indexing service, my video is still
online under the same URL, and I can still point users at a different indexing
service. If censorship becomes problematic or widespread, users will move to
different indexes because the network lock-in of an indexer is less than the
lock-in of a social platform. As far as speed concerns go, users can fall back
on slower indexers only when fast ones fail. All of this is workable.

But if I'm removed from Youtube, I have to start over from scratch with a new
URL on a different site with different features that doesn't play nicely with
any of the existing tools or infrastructure.

> I'm talking about centralization as a emergent phenomenon

The emergent phenomenon you're talking about is that sometimes better, faster
services have more users than bad services. That's not a problem with
decentralization, and that's not a problem decentralization is trying to
solve. Decentralization is only trying to mitigate the harmful effects of that
phenomenon.

It is not a desirable goal of decentralization to make every node in a graph
have the same traffic levels -- and I mean that both on a technical and on a
cultural level.

~~~
jasode
_> When I talk about decentralization as a practical concern, I'm not worried
about users aggregating around good services. I'm worried about whether the
architecture supports moving away from or augmenting those services if
something goes wrong in the future._

I understand your point here but this sounds more like a _technical_ detail
and not about social power structure. To your point, I'd also say the
combination of DNS and http protocols _already allow_ for people to move their
content around the internet (keep the same url) and yet people _do care about
aggregation around platforms_ because they don't like concentration of power.
So even though you state you don't worry about it, others do. I believe
reducing platform power is part of the motivation for p2p video.

 _> And what I mean when I talk about centralization as a continuum is that
the social aggregated behaviors you're worried about are still strictly better
under a PeerTube system than they are under a Youtube system -- so there's no
point in bashing PeerTube just because it doesn't solve literally every
problem._

Btw, I'm not "bashing" Peertube. Instead, I'm trying to emphasize that it
would be a mistaken belief to think that a p2p video protocol can stop
_defacto_ centralization. (E.g. see history of http protocol on why that
doesn't happen.) Instead of thinking about what's _technically possible_ with
cache index servers, we should think about what _humans_ typically do that
_inadvertently recreates centralization_ that nobody seems to want. A quality
cache index server can create a _feedback loop_ that attracts both users and
video uploaders which _weakens decentralized p2p_ nodes. If that particular
cache server's popularity doesn't really matter because p2p nodes will always
be able to independently exist, then that means _today_ we can also say that
Youtube doesn't matter because you can already serve videos (AWS, Azure, home
server) independently outside of Youtube.

 _> If I'm removed from a centralized PeerTube indexing service, my video is
still online under the same URL, and I can still point users at a different
indexing service. If censorship becomes problematic or widespread, users will
move to different indexes because the network lock-in of an indexer is less
than the lock-in of a social platform._

But people can make the same argument about Google's index search results.
E.g. it doesn't matter if your blog or niche pet store got removed from the
page 1 of the search results because you can theoretically point users to a
different indexing service (Bing, or roll-your-own index ranking algorithm
with Common Crawl dataset, etc). _The content at the url domain you already
own is still at that url._ But we both know that answer (while true in a
sense) does not satisfy people. Website owners get very upset when they lose
ranking or get removed (censorship) from search results altogether. Even
though there are _technical solutions_ for people to not use "google.com",
it's irrelevant when their mental framework is "power & influence" of Google.

 _> The emergent phenomenon you're talking about is that sometimes better,
faster services have more users than bad services. That's not a problem with
decentralization, and that's not a problem decentralization is trying to
solve. Decentralization is only trying to mitigate the harmful effects of that
phenomenon._

I think I disagree with that but let me expand. If the goal of
decentralization is some diversity (e.g. some niche content has a place to
serve video outside of Youtube) then your paragraph makes sense. However, if
it's the more ambitious idea of "replace Youtube", then yes, it's a huge
problem of decentralization that it can't be as fast/convenient/quality as
centralized services for normal users. If most mainstream users are _avoiding_
decentralized services because it "didn't solve problems it doesn't claim to
solve" \-- does it mean decentralization "succeeded"? I guess there's semantic
wiggle room there.

 _> It is not a desirable goal of decentralization to make every node in a
graph have the same traffic levels_

I never claimed equal traffic was desirable and that seems to be an
uncharitable reading of my points.

~~~
boomlinde
_> Instead of thinking about what's technically possible with cache index
servers, we should think about what humans typically do that inadvertently
recreates centralization that nobody seems to want._

The comment you link to above makes a technical argument. It asserts what you
believe is and isn't _technically possible_. In that sense I feel like you are
moving the goal posts.

------
jcfrei
I really like the idea behind these types of decentralized projects. However I
want to mention that they rarely take off. And it's usually not due to some
technical or marketing related reason. The simple economic reason for the lack
of their success is that centralized organization like YouTube can operate
much more efficiently than a decentralized one like peertube. Some of the
reasons are: Higher organizational efficiency (faster restructuring due to an
explicit hierarchy), which allows them to quickly adapt to a changing
environment. Benefiting from economies of scale (buying specialized hardware
for video hosting in bulk). Being a for-profit organization provides them with
a constant feedback loop whether they still meet consumer demands. On top of
that a constant source of income allows them to have paid employees. Paid
employees are (all year round) more motivated to continuously adapt the
platform to changing consumer demands.

~~~
smilliken
You're right on all points.

Still, some of the most successful systems are decentralized: internet,
telephone, email, torrent, bitcoin et al, the web (caveat that DNS is
centralized), etc.

All of these examples are basically networks of people. Do we want these
networks operated by private companies?

~~~
jcfrei
I think what you refer to as decentralized systems is for the most part
applications on top of the TCP/IP protocol stack. Still I wouldn't call the
examples you provided - with the exception of torrents - as decentralized. The
internet and the telephone systems are mostly run by a few large ISPs and
CDNs, email by a few large providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook), and for most
people the web consists of Facebook, Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, etc and a
few large newspaper sites.

------
sitzkrieg
I setup a peertube and companion mastodon just about a year ago. I mostly used
the peertube personally. A few weeks later I noticed some user was uploading
movie rips so I disabled the user account in the barebones admin user
interface and set a user data limit at 2 gigabytes, the server had tons of
space and this seemed generous.

Fast foward EOM, what appeared to be the same user created an automated system
to create a new user, upload 2GB and move to the next. Peertubes basic ui had
no way to mass ban, set filters, nothing. I had a monster bill and just
unplugged the whole thing because the users were coming from a wide range of
ips.

While I hope that was an outlier, the UI still leaves a LOT to be desired, and
slower instances are painful to use

~~~
majewsky
I love how we spend so much time rediscovering all those hard truths that we
supposedly already learned in the "Web 2.0" era. Whenever you have user-
generated content, you need to deal with the quality and legality of that
content. FOSS and decentralization enthusiasts still seem to be imagining the
internet as a place where all people willingly cooperate to create positive
value for everyone, as if trolls, pirates and conspiracy theorists weren't a
thing.

------
lewisflude
Went on [https://peertube.video/](https://peertube.video/) and immediately got
a bunch of porn. Not really sure from a consumer aspect this is yet fully
there from a UX perspective!

But the tech is really interesting and as a federated alternative I could see
it doing really well. Best of luck to the team!

~~~
bogwog
Anyone can start an instance and post whatever they want. Just because it has
"peertube" in the URL doesn't mean it's an "official" instance or anything
like that.

~~~
majewsky
Whether a service is centralized or decentralized might matter a lot to us
here, but to 99% of people it's utterly irrelevant. An implementation detail.

Therefore their mental model will equate Youtube (a service) with Peertube (an
application used by multiple services). If illegal content is on some
Peertube, it's "on Peertube" and it drags down all the other stuff that is "on
Peertube". Just like how big advertisers withdraw all their campaigns from all
of Youtube when a single popular Youtuber posts a particularly distasteful
video. They don't recognize the substructure inside Youtube's community
because, to the public majority, Youtube is a monolithic thing. It's going to
be the same for Peertube. (Unless Peertube has a better marketing department
than behemoths like Youtube, which it likely has not.)

~~~
bogwog
The solution to that then is to not pretend like PeerTube is centralized by
hijacking the name for your URL. If you're hosting an instance, give it a
unique name. If MyCoolVideos.com is a peertube instance with a bunch of child
porn, then MyCoolVideos.com is going to get labeled as a bad site, and no one
will know or care if the underlying technology is PeerTube.

This is a problem with federated services in general. People always seem to
want to register on the "official" instance, when really there is none. I
think there should be a solution to help people make the decision, or better
yet not force them to make a decision at all. Maybe some OpenID-type
login/account system should be used instead of having to make an account on a
single instance. Or simply stop trying to market the underlying tech, like
Mastodon or PeerTube, since that's not going to make a difference to the end-
user and will just confuse them.

------
m12k
Does anyone know of a successful server-based peer-to-peer project other than
TOR and cryptocurrencies? I'm all for breaking free of the stranglehold of
centralized proprietary platforms, but it also seems to me that most of the
open source projects that ever really succeed at competing against entrenched
proprietary incombents are the ones where a centralized service is being
provided by a non-profit (e.g. Wikimedia Foundation, Mozilla, Canonical).
Maybe expecting people to set up a server is just a bridge too far? Maybe
there's just too many conveniences in centralization for todays users to put
up with the hassle? Maybe there needs to be a centralized server that is as
easy to use as the proprietary ones, and then the hardcore users can set up
their own and federate with the central one?

~~~
cyborgx7
E-Mail

~~~
m12k
Right, and web servers too - neither had much competition when it launched
though, so the point about no being able to beat incumbent proprietary
solutions still stands. Not to mention the majority of people get their email
hosted by a proprietary service these days.

~~~
cyborgx7
>neither had much competition when it launched though

I'm sceptikal as well, about a federated protocol being able to replace an
existing entrenched player. Buy I still hope.

>Not to mention the majority of people get their email hosted by a proprietary
service these days.

But all the proprietary services talk to eachother, and, mostly, talk to
private instances as well. There are absolutely allowed to be proprietary
PeerTube instances.

------
kgraves
Great work! This is a good YouTube alternative I can get behind, however after
reading a little bit I kind of frowned at this line on the plugin paragraph.

> You could also imagine plug-ins to sort videos in reverse alphabetical
> order, or to add a Tipee, Paypal or Patreon button below videos!

Please don't consider or be tempted by those three proprietary platforms, I
would much rather prefer donating using Liberapay instead.

Other than this, PeerTube has got huge potential and I would love to know what
content creators (on YT or HN) think of it.

~~~
vanous
Unfortunately, there is no alternative. Everybody uses PayPal or Stripe on the
backend...

~~~
krageon
> Everybody uses PayPal or Stripe

Are you implying that there are literally no other payment platforms than ones
that reduce to PayPal or Stripe?

~~~
vanous
Unfortunately yes. Look at Librepay's "How it works for creators" paragraph:

"We currently support processing payments through Stripe and PayPal."

------
wbillingsley
Have you tried talking to universities or university video providers (e.g.
Echo360)?

A lot of universities are part of networks (e.g., the one I teach at, UNE in
Australia, is part of the Regional Universities Network.) So they seem to fit
the pattern of organisations that produce and host a lot of videos (course
videos), don't like YouTube (we sometimes get told off for putting course
videos there) and are part of networks that might like federated access to
each others' video collections (while we mostly produce our own - it's not tv
it's a teaching course and students usually want to hear from their teachers -
sometimes we'll want to include something like a guest talk from industry).

Universities may be less interested in the bittorrent streaming aspect (they
already successfully stream video and don't face the ridiculous peaks in
demand because most videos aren't public) but ActivityPub to be able to search
selected videos from each others' repositories could be interesting.

------
sschueller
I love this project and that is sets the focus on providing a video platform
as its primary goal ignoring implementing monetizaion like crypto tokens etc.
for now.

Many thanks to all the people who worked hard on getting PeerTube to what it
is today.

------
gillesjacobs
In the space of distributed video platforms, I think Peertube has the right
idea: Bitchute is gaining a lot of traction, but the core issue of centralized
control remains. Distributed content delivery is not enough to prevent
censorship and viewer manipulation. Federation will allow many platforms to
proliferate and solves this problem.

I hope Peertube gains traction, but they're fighting an uphill battle when it
comes to the centralized competition. The problem that PeerTube cannot solve
is engagement and stability:

\- Engagement: Unlike Youtube they cannot use a recommender system like for
suggestions. Most Youtube views are from recommendations and related videos.
\- Stability: As a business or media outlet, I will link to a Youtube video
but not a PeerTube video because I know Youtube will host it indefinitely.

~~~
yorwba
> Stability: As a business or media outlet, I will link to a Youtube video but
> not a PeerTube video because I know Youtube will host it indefinitely.

If you want the video to stay up indefinitely (or at least as long as your
company continues operating) you should probably host it yourself (e.g. on
your own PeerTube instance), because YouTube might take it down whenever they
feel like it.

------
Communitivity
A major differentiator for PeerTube, if they are still doing the decentralized
data route, is that content publishers control their content. I am curious if
that is still the case with PeerTube, but it used to be 'Mastodon for Videos'.
That means a central authority can't take down videos. A site like
peertube.social can only ban certain videos from being shared through its
site, or ban individual users, and perhaps keep a blacklist to share with
other sites.

I find it interesting that the Madame Secretary episode I watched last night
(from last week) dealt with the issue of deep fakes. Particularly how easy it
is, if someone is willing to put in the time, to create and publish video
showing someone doing/saying something they'd never do.

Decentralized trust and reputation metrics are going to be a big thing over
the next decade.

~~~
xouse
This is one of the rare good fits for blockchain. You can get the hash of a
video, or hash for each segment of a video, then store that hash in a
blockchain transaction, which makes it publicly verifiable while also serving
as a timestamp.

A news organization could have their own wallet that they're sending currency
from which acts as a verifier that it's them, then they store a hash/s of
their video on the blockchain. Then you could have a facebook/twitter player
that checks the hash of shared news video clips and could display a lock icon
and message that says something like this video is verified non tampered from
the CNN source.

------
tasogare
The work done is awesome. I’ll try it because the idea of self-hosting low
traffic videos is interesting.

Besides, I can’t stand articles that use the so called écriture inclusive.
Either they write in the accepted, standardized version of French or they fork
it but don’t call it French.

~~~
chungus_khan
Sprecaþ ᵹē Englisce? Language does evolve. English used to be a heavily
inflected language with 5 grammatical cases and three grammatical genders,
very free word order, negative concord, no do-insertion, etc.

And no matter how much AF wants people in France to say "fin de semaine", they
won't. A language is defined by the body speaking it, and standards bodies can
really only suggest things to them.

------
Seb-C
So the only peer-related functionality is allowing a site to share videos with
other sites? While I appreciate the project, this seems like a useless gadget
to me.

If we want to fix the problems of Youtube we need a service that allows
creators to independently make their own video distribution website as easily
as creating a Wordpress blog today. It means something that just works without
technical knowledge, while the creator has 100% freedom and responsibility
about what is hosted.

The www is decentralized by nature, no need to reinvent crazy and complex
things. We just need to be able to create a video-distribution-website as
easily as a facebook page or a youtube channel.

------
MayeulC
I really like the platform, but I think it would shine even more with scalable
video coding support, to the point that it would be a game-changer.
Unfortunately, the issue was closed [1].

Do any of you know open source libraries, or documentation on SVC for mp4, VP9
or AV1? I don't think ffmpeg supports this at all, which is a shame.

[1]:
[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/99](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/99)

~~~
throwaway9x
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding)

From what I can tell SVC adds lower resolution streams to the H264 bitstream
so that devices with weaker decoders can still decode the video. This would
increase, not decrease, the bandwidth.

>Do any of you know open source libraries, or documentation on SVC for mp4,
VP9 or AV1

It appears to be defined as annex G in the H.264 (mpeg4 part 10) spec, so it's
not available in VP9 or AV1.

The status quo is to use Adaptive Bitrate, where you publish streams at
different quality levels and have the client choose which stream to use to
adapt to network conditions.

~~~
MayeulC
> This would increase, not decrease, the bandwidth.

Not if that part of the stream isn't downloaded. It's quite easy to skip over
some chunks in either HTTP (range) or bittorent.

> The status quo is to use Adaptive Bitrate, where you publish streams at
> different quality levels and have the client choose which stream to use to
> adapt to network conditions.

This works well if you have a good connection (uninterrupted, so that you can
switch to adapt to the available bandwidth), however you cannot progressively
load better and better quality content, as the low quality one will be wasted.
Moreover, if the connection is interrupted, you cannot fall back to the low
quality content, as you probably haven't downloaded it.

However, that's just wasteful, as it would "just" be a matter of presenting
data in a manner that can be better chuncked. And for adaptative bitrate to
work well, you need a reliable bandwidth estimate from the start...

Luckily, network infrastructure is improving everywhere. But that shouldn't be
a reason to be _that_ wasteful, especially given that a) most of Internet's
bandwidth is dedicated to video b) it would lower transcoding energy costs as
well c) if everyone gets the same file, it's _much, much_ more effective for
p2p, such as in that case (especially for a moderate number of viewers).

Edit:

> From what I can tell SVC adds lower resolution streams to the H264 bitstream
> so that devices with weaker decoders can still decode the video.

It's more like organizing the data so that some can be dropped, and it
gracefully degrades quality (FPS, resolution...) instead of dropping some
images. I tried to explain it with my own terms there:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17307277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17307277)
before knowing the proper name.

Searching HN, I found
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18045494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18045494)
which kind of answers my question.

------
bedros
peertube will not catch up unless someone creates an advertisement market
place for PeerTube, so content creators can monetize their content outside
YouTube

here's a startup idea for you all. :-)

------
Hitton
Do I understand it correctly, that the federation in this case means that I
can watch video from site A on site B, while it's being hosted on A, meaning
bandwidth cost for A and no ability to for instance suggest videos A hosts,
show viewer advertisement, etc?

Not sure how would I like it if I hosted instance, paid storage and bandwidth
costs while noone even visits my site and views all content on site with
better SEO.

~~~
yorwba
Federation in this case means that you can watch videos from site A on site B,
simultaneously seeding it for other users, reducing bandwidth cost for A. This
only happens if site B federates with site A, meaning that it lists videos A
hosts in its catalog (a mild suggestion to maybe watch them). Site A would be
unable to include ads, except by baking them into the videos or descriptions
etc.

I'm pretty sure PeerTube isn't aiming to provide an easy way to host an ad-
supported video site. They want to be an alternative to YouTube, not an exact
equivalent. If you need money to produce or host videos, their current
suggestion is to ask for it: [https://joinpeertube.org/faq#what-is-peertube-s-
remuneration...](https://joinpeertube.org/faq#what-is-peertube-s-remuneration-
policy)

------
00992266
I like the idea, peer to peer and decentralized, but it seems like the UX and
UI should be the biggest problem of it by now.

------
wingworks
I tried to play the about PeerTube video and selected 1080p and got about a
second, then spent most of the time waiting while it buffered... very slowly
(100-200KB/s), whereas YouTube 1080p is near-instant. I would have thought
there (probably) most popular video should be well seeded, but I only see like
2 seeds on it.

------
simion314
Some people here said that Youtube has a good recomandation algorithm, this is
weird because I stil get same video recommended and auto played even if I
disliked it and trying to google "how to do X on youtube" just returns youtube
results for your query not web results on how to fix youtube

------
richardARPANET
Unfortunately, "normal people" are never going to use something like this in
significant numbers.

We need a centralized video hosting website, with freedom of speech values,
with huge funding, which markets to normal people.

The only way I see this happening is a single bored billionaire going for it.

~~~
ddalex
We need centralized access for discovery, but distributed access for storage
and accessing, as to spread the costs.

And then we need countless people on the internet to buy, install, maintain
and replace the hardware that powers all of this.

That's not easy.

------
tiborsaas
Is there a search engine to look for content across all instances?

------
sabujp
elephant in the room: how does this platform deal with DMCA requests,
copyright violations, and content moderation.

~~~
M2Ys4U
That's a little bit like asking how nginx deals with DMCA requests.

It depends who's running the specific server running PeerTube.

------
ajuc
My problem with peertube is - if I install it and federate I'll have all sorts
of illegal videos on my computer. Nazi propaganda, child porn, anything.

I'm not going to spend hours moderating that, and I certainly don't want to
explain myself to police.

And if I don't federate it's basically less convenient ftp.

~~~
danShumway
> These instances can chose to follow each other (this is called federating).
> For example, if the head of IT services of College X would like KarateTube
> videos to appear on CollegeTube, all she has to do is federate with
> KarateTube. KarateTube’s videos will remain on its server but students who
> are used to watching videos from CollegeTube will be able to see them.

It sounds like federation isn't an everything-or-nothing approach. You can
federate with a specific instance that you trust, and even in that case, you
won't host any videos on your device other than what you upload.

Would like to see confirmation, but it also seems like instances can follow in
one-direction. IE, I could have a private server that follows no one, but
allow other instances that want to include my public videos in their search
results to follow me.

That assumes I understand the details correctly -- the FAQ is a tiny bit vague
so maybe I'm misunderstanding.

------
solf1re
can anyone tdlr peertube vs lbry?

~~~
cyborgx7
Peertube is a feration protocol for YouTube-like video hosts to interact with
eachother. Or more precisely, it's an implementation of ActivityPub, like
Mastodon, focused on video hosting.

LBRY appears to be some kind of cryptocurrency thing. I don't know. Looks
shady.

~~~
solf1re
Thanks for the response, not sure why my request had been downvoted :/ I've
used LBRY in the past, its decentralised video hosting as I understand it. But
also allows for content producers to monetise their stuff. kauffj mentions it
above -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513640)

------
timwaagh
It seems like they did not consider how they want peertubers to be able to
monetize. On the contrary, it seems they have something against 'capturing
your attention and selling it to Fanta'. I want this piece of work to be
exhibit A in how staying inside your ideological bubble will ensure failure. I
think it's especially sad since they used crowdfunded money so they aren't
just failing on their own dime.

~~~
detaro
Most of the YouTubers I follow have ads they embed themselves in their videos,
sponsored content or patreons. I'm not sure the platform running ads is
actually strictly needed. (+ of course it doesn't have replace YouTube to be
valuable)

It'd be interesting if an instance could add them itself - I think doing it
dynamically would mess with Webtorrent support?

~~~
timwaagh
Might work for bigger channels with a stable following. Which is great but
they need to start somewhere. I have an old friend who owns a history channel
on yt. History Hustle. His vids are quite good but he's no pro just kinda
doing it on the side. He doesn't have any real kind of sponsorship aside of
his one patreon and yt. I think a lot of guys started out this way too. But I
remember how other friend bragging when he got like a few euro through it. I
think that inspired it. I don't know how that kind of thing would work without
the yt model.

