> YouTube (and other mainstream providers) solves user stories. The user story is "I want to find and watch interesting videos" and they nail it.
You miss another user story: IT department wants to self host a video distribution platform on their intranet and users need to embed video in intranet CMS (blogs, wikis, kb, etc.) and they will watch those videos at home, at the office and in between places.
Thinking audience and monetization, is basically thinking "youtube clone", and that narrows outlooks on what peertube brings to the table.
> The user story for this, judging by their homepage (https://joinpeertube.org), seems to be "I want a boring lecture on how bad Big Tech is"?
Just pick a different paragraph then:
What is PeerTube?
PeerTube allows you to create your own video platform, in complete independence.
At some point, someone literate enough to understand how bad Big Tech is but still promoting Big Tech should be face it.
It is like smoking. People say "I know that smoking kill, I don’t want to be reminded all the time".
Well, as long as you are polluting and killing innocents by smoking in their vicinity, you are the asshole. You don’t seem to understand so people keep telling you (and, guess what, in the case of Peertube, they even tell you in a friendly way with cute mascots.)
And yet the comparison is apt. Both provide ephemeral positive signals to the brain at a cost that is detrimental to individuals' or society's health (not even talking about environment, which is a part of society's health).
> You miss another user story: IT department wants to self host a video distribution platform on their intranet and users need to embed video in intranet CMS (blogs, wikis, kb, etc.) and they will watch those videos at home, at the office and in between places.
It's not missed, that story doesn't exist.
In any place where IT can even think about self hosting video they likely control the user's entire tech stack and don't need a super flexible player, they can just use a video tag...
On the other hand a company like this is more likely to use a SaaS product because they would have done a cost benefit analysis and figured spinning up a server and allocating bandwidth which could include significant network stack upgrades would cost far too much money to self host video.
Also it's free to stick the video on YouTube as an unisted video and embed the player... There is also other platforms that can be paid for the exact same service...
> > You miss another user story: IT department wants to self host a video distribution platform on their intranet and users need to embed video in intranet CMS (blogs, wikis, kb, etc.) and they will watch those videos at home, at the office and in between places.
> It's not missed, that story doesn't exist.
Sure it does. We have been discussing it for weeks with colleagues and bed testing it. Next step is to consider using v5 or v6.
> In any place where IT can even think about self hosting video they likely control the user's entire tech stack and don't need a super flexible player, they can just use a video tag...
I had written a longer comment but if you equate slapping an mp4 URL in a video tag with what peertube brings then I frankly don't see the point. Not sure what controlling the user's entire tech stack even means then.
> On the other hand a company like this is more likely to use a SaaS product because they would have done a cost benefit analysis and figured spinning up a server and allocating bandwidth which could include significant network stack upgrades would cost far too much money to self host video.
Pretty sure peertube and its variable bitrate and resolution will use less bandwidth than a user's original mp4 file in a video tag would but okay.
edit:
> Also it's free to stick the video on YouTube as an unisted video and embed the player...
> Not sure what controlling the user's entire tech stack even means then.
Hardware and software they are running as well as bandwidth available to them both at home offices as well as on site offices.
So yes just directly serving whatever bitrate video would be equivalent to YouTube 1080p internally as the only option is just fine since even if it's less bandwidth I don't think any of my users would want to be watching 360p video.
And at the same time I don't need to allocate too much bandwidth for on my own server that since I can easily offload that to a CDN.
If I need to serve a large repository of videos I wouldn't self host, I would pay a SaaS since storage costs alone would be absurd, having to then also store not only the high bitrate masters but also every intermediate format...
> If I need to serve a large repository of videos I wouldn't self host, I would pay a SaaS since storage costs alone would be absurd, having to then also store not only the high bitrate masters but also every intermediate format...
I can hear that. Maybe in a year we will have to face the facts that we reached capacity and underestimated our needs if it's too much successful. For now, we want/need/must self-host on premise so at some point maybe we will have to say "we can't do it, either we offload or we shut down the service".
> > Also it's free to stick the video on YouTube as an unisted video and embed the player...
Yeah, right. What can go wrong uh...
Naturally a lot, but for a company that won't pay the actually low rates a SaaS provider charges for this, this would work just fine... Also why I mentioned that there are SaaS providers that do offer that which is a little more reliable. I believe one if them is the new up and coming one called Microsoft that most companies already have some sort of business agreement with.
I'm down for idealogical reason, in that case fo ahead.
It's fun doing it yourself, it's just not good business in general.
Honestly if any business is already paying for M365 of G Workspaces there is absolutely no reason to deploy your own video infra, you likely are already paying for video infra.
I get so tired of hearing about tech stacks. Tech stack discussions are 90% developers spinning their wheels and 10% money. Its really closer to 80/20, but most developers cannot get out of their own heads enough to reach a 20% discussion about money and business expenses.
You miss another user story: IT department wants to self host a video distribution platform on their intranet and users need to embed video in intranet CMS (blogs, wikis, kb, etc.) and they will watch those videos at home, at the office and in between places.
Thinking audience and monetization, is basically thinking "youtube clone", and that narrows outlooks on what peertube brings to the table.
> The user story for this, judging by their homepage (https://joinpeertube.org), seems to be "I want a boring lecture on how bad Big Tech is"?
Just pick a different paragraph then: