[HN Gopher] Let's improve PeerTube - Help us define PeerTube's f...
___________________________________________________________________
 
Let's improve PeerTube - Help us define PeerTube's future roadmap
 
Author : raybb
Score  : 109 points
Date   : 2022-07-21 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
 
web link (joinpeertube.org)
w3m dump (joinpeertube.org)
 
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Yes monetisation and ads would attract more people, but I want a
| YouTube without ads and without monetisation. It's more than them
| just being annoying, it changes the entire way people produce
| content and present it.
 
  | yegle wrote:
  | You mean YouTube Premium?
 
    | Synaesthesia wrote:
    | More like Youtube how it was in the beginning.
    | 
    | What I'm saying is that monetization changes the way videos
    | are made. They generally tend to be padded out, with intros,
    | attempts at social engagement, ("Please like and subscribe,
    | and let me know how you feel in the comments!"). This style
    | is actively encouraged by YouTube.
 
  | Crash0v3rid3 wrote:
  | You want a YouTube like service but no ads/monetization?
  | 
  | I'd love to hear about this business plan.
 
    | smoldesu wrote:
    | I think it's perfectly realistic for such a service to exist,
    | but I also think Peertube has the wrong idea. IPFS is a
    | little closer to how I'd prefer videos being hosted, but _I
    | also_ prefer the sharding /peering of a Magnet link. Once
    | someone gets all of that under one umbrella, you'd have a
    | service that is ostensibly both faster than YouTube and more
    | distributed/decentralized.
    | 
    | Now, can we convince Mr Beast to join this platform? No, but
    | I don't think most people will notice a discernible dip in
    | quality. Most exploitation-tubers would probably scuttle off
    | to Facebook or Instagram, but I think most of the Patron-
    | supported content creators would buy-in to a well made
    | alternative. Key operand being _well made_ though...
 
    | vorpalhex wrote:
    | Well by definition it's not a business. Maybe it's a bunch of
    | friends just having fun doing good tutorials. Maybe it's a
    | non-profit focused on financial literacy videos for the
    | public.
 
      | upupandup wrote:
      | Who will bear the cost of bandwidth, servers and
      | maintenance? What if it's not just your friends thats
      | mainly using it but millions of people who rely on generous
      | few to keep the lights on? What happens if somebody uses
      | multiple IP addresses to download and drain the bandwidth
      | with other users complaining? Who will handle those
      | tickets?
 
        | contravariant wrote:
        | If big servers were the only ones paying for bandwidth
        | this argument would make sense, but the way the internet
        | works right now is everyone is paying for all the
        | bandwidth they use so there's not a priori a reason to
        | assume the bandwidth is entirely unpaid for.
        | 
        | As torrents demonstrate it's not necessarily bandwidth
        | that's a problem, it's mostly durability and
        | discoverability.
 
        | vorpalhex wrote:
        | Well it's peertube so bandwidth is reasonable. Most cheap
        | high bandwidth projects rack machines in datacenters
        | where you pay for the pipe, not the gig.
        | 
        | Servers and other fixed costs can be handled by donations
        | or selling merch.
        | 
        | Tickets and high bandwidth cases may not be a good fit
        | for the project, or may be on a "as available" basis.
 
| lxe wrote:
| Is there a "recommended" feed of peertube videos where I can
| discover content? Or a upvote-like system? Or something curated?
| Where do I find trending and interesting content on the
| ecosystem?
 
  | cowtools wrote:
  | Choose a homeserver you like and go to the discover or trending
  | page. here are some big instances to try (many are european,
  | you may want to choose an english language one):
  | 
  | https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?sort=-totalInst...
  | 
  | A lot of my friends use diode.zone . That is like a more
  | electronics-focused instance. There are views and likes, but
  | mostly I just check my subscriptions. The popularity of a video
  | depends a lot on traffic from external websites as well as how
  | many instances federate it.
 
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I think peertube needs to stick to the basics: a self hostable
| tube site server that federates over AP for comments and
| subscriptions.
| 
| They've got a great API, they've done fantastic work on live
| streaming, they have WebRTC implemented to distribute server
| load, and they've figured out searchability across multiple
| servers with sepia search. I don't see what needs improvement
| really.
| 
| Personally I think the 1 click monetization ad driven model is
| going to die, I don't think a lot of work should be put towards
| implementing something like this. People are moving towards a
| sponsorship model or patron model, and we are seeing all sorts of
| problems with the 1 click monetization with regard to patent
| trolling, content policing and the like, it just doesn't work out
| well. Of course with this transition comes a move away from
| monopoly on tube sites like what YouTube has, if someone is
| basing their revenue on patrons or sponsors they don't need to
| keep all their content on one website, peertube pretty obviously
| fits into this business environment well.
| 
| So I think as far as monetization, peertube should focus on tools
| for creators that help them accurately count their viewership and
| active subscriptions, and integrations that enable people to hide
| content behind a paywall for patrons, a plugin system for
| different payment methods would be fantastic.
| 
| Besides this I think peertube is pretty much feature complete,
| although some work could be done on decentralizing search.
 
  | vorpalhex wrote:
  | I agree here. I think features that help the (general) patreon
  | model are a winner for adoption. Maybe features that make it
  | easier to host custom peertube instances for content creators.
 
| zackees wrote:
 
| haolez wrote:
| How's the censoring story on PeerTube? The good kind of
| censoring, I mean. If I'm to use a decentralized service which
| provides me with content, I want to be able to sensor it against
| terrorist propaganda, child pornography and the likes. Does it
| offer a solution to that? Genuinely curious.
 
  | cowtools wrote:
  | It depends on the instance you are on. I don't think I have
  | ever seen child porn or terrorist recruitment videos on
  | peertube, but only about half of peertube is english-speaking
  | so I can't speak on behalf of the whole network.
  | 
  | Moderation depends on the instance. The sysadmins choose what
  | videos to ban and what other instances to federate with. Most
  | users choose a single homeserver that reflects their values on
  | moderation.
  | 
  | Diode.zone is an example of a popular "heavily moderated"
  | instance. It has some decent videos.
  | 
  | The less-moderated instances tend to federate more so I think a
  | lot of the unpopular stuff gets drowned out with "popular"
  | stuff (which apparently includes a lot of european TV news,
  | linux stuff, liberal/libertarian rants, video games, public
  | domain films, and "my little pony" videos). There is very
  | little NSFW content at all because the default behavior is to
  | blur the thumbnails and many instances just block it anyways.
 
  | beepbooptheory wrote:
  | Is terrorist propaganda, generally, an issue with stuff like
  | this? I have never heard of that specifically as a concern.
 
  | agentdrtran wrote:
  | Nope, it's fully decentralized as far as I'm aware. The
  | resolution is "forward the URL to the cops".
 
    | uncomputation wrote:
    | But what can law enforcement do against decentralized
    | networks with anonymous hosters? With torrents for example,
    | the ISPs go after peers using their service but the content
    | itself will stay up until all peers stop seeding.
 
      | wmf wrote:
      | AFAIK PeerTube is federated and non-anonymous; it's quite
      | different from P2P.
 
| TheDesolate0 wrote:
| LOL.
| 
| No.
 
| riffic wrote:
| Framasoft should run a Peertube-as-a-service and pitch the
| platform to those who may be Google-averse or have a need to keep
| content on their own domain name (govs, institional orgs, etc).
| 
| btw I think this is what Eugen, et al, should be doing with
| Mastodon gGmbH.
 
  | Tmpod wrote:
  | Yeah, that would be nice, like how Matrix has EMS and such.
  | 
  | Mastodon already has plenty of services like that, such as
  | Masto.Host, but none are "official".
 
  | max51 wrote:
  | It would only work while the service is not popular and almost
  | on one uses it. As soon as they attract the attention of
  | copyrights holders, they will be forced to implement the same
  | type of BS we see at youtube. The tech might might be
  | decentralized, but you lose 99% of the benefit of
  | decentralization when you pay a company to host it for you.
  | Whatever good intention they may have, it's all gonna go out
  | the window they the owners are facing a decade behind jail
  | and/or tens of millions of dollars in fines.
  | 
  | It's the exact same thing with most platforms that people think
  | will kill youtube. The only reason why they avoided
  | implementing all the crap we hate about youtube is that they
  | are not popular.
 
    | wmf wrote:
    | Or the hosting provider can just drop you at the first sign
    | of attack and it's up to you to migrate your domain and
    | restore from backup at a new provider.
 
    | beepbooptheory wrote:
    | Genuinely curious, if nobody at all is making any advertising
    | money from it, and hosting costs are decentralized (even if
    | that concept is fraught in practice), _will_ copyright
    | holders and /or trolls be as aggressive?
 
      | riffic wrote:
      | perhaps copyright owners could be more willing to share
      | their content if they had a place they could do so from,
      | and could also monetize to their hearts content.
      | 
      | this would effectively cut Google out of the rent-seeking
      | loop.
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | nathanaldensr wrote:
  | I like the idea. When you say "keep content on their own domain
  | name," do you mean the physical bits are on my servers as the
  | owner of the content, exposed by my custom domain, or do you
  | mean the bits are hosted on PeerTube's servers and merely
  | exposed using my domain? The distinction is important.
 
    | riffic wrote:
    | an example of this in action:
    | 
    | I live in Los Angeles. I want the city to archive its city
    | council meetings on a video platform. Preferably, these would
    | be available from a subdomain of lacity.gov instead of being
    | available through youtube or another company of that sort
    | (there are _all sorts_ of namespace issues with today 's
    | approach).
    | 
    | The example here doesn't need to be limited strictly to
    | council meetings either, the city could host all sorts of
    | video on its own instance of the PeerTube site. I know
    | there's currently a "LACityClerk" channel, but I'm sure you
    | could find other Youtube channels concerning the fire
    | department, LAPD, Department of Transportation, City Library,
    | etc:
    | 
    | https://www.youtube.com/c/LACityClerk/videos
    | 
    | I (as a constituent) don't really care about the underlying
    | hosting. Framasoft, seeing as how they are intimately
    | familiar with how Peertube works, can sell that underlying
    | hosting. The benefit for the city is they can centralize
    | administration and control over this rather than just give
    | all their content to Google.
 
      | nathanaldensr wrote:
      | Cool. So if I understand you correctly, you effectively
      | want to decouple hosting (where the bits are) from exposure
      | (how I as a user find and view them).
 
        | tpxl wrote:
        | I think three models are viable:
        | 
        | * Youtube-like website where people post videos
        | 
        | * A hosted service on your own domain where they host the
        | videos (like the parent was talking about)
        | 
        | * A self hosted version where you host the videos and pay
        | for technical support
 
        | riffic wrote:
        | I made some edits to my parent comment to further explain
        | my pitch and what the benefit to my hypothetical example
        | city would be if they were to be a Framasoft / Peertube
        | customer.
 
        | toomuchtodo wrote:
        | The Wordpress equivalent of YouTube, with discovery and
        | federation plug-ins. Anyone can host a Wordpress
        | instance, but you can also pay Automattic to host it for
        | you (your data is also portable and you can move from
        | hosted to self hosted and vice versa).
 
        | riffic wrote:
        | that should probably be my go-to metaphor here.
        | Automattic seems to be doing okay as a professional
        | WordPress hosting shop.
        | 
        | Your clarification about the data being portable is
        | definitely key here.
 
        | toomuchtodo wrote:
        | You might find these resources of value:
        | https://www.ngi.eu/blog/2021/10/05/internet-trust-
        | accessibil...
        | 
        | https://beeldengeluid.github.io/extending-peertube/
 
        | riffic wrote:
        | really cool!
        | 
        | Cities aren't the only ideal client to make this pitch to
        | either, there are all sorts of art collectives,
        | educators, museums, even commercial interests who would
        | probably benefit to _move off of YouTube_ perhaps simply
        | for the privacy and data collection concerns.
 
        | [deleted]
 
        | toomuchtodo wrote:
        | Agreed. Framasoft really needs to consider becoming the
        | Automattic equivalent to Peertube, which could then spin
        | up the revenue flywheel for further development.
        | Donations have worked so far, but only work up to a
        | point. You need dedicated engineering, product
        | management, customer support, etc if you want to take on
        | Youtube, and the vast majority of customers don't want to
        | do this work themselves (in my experience). They want to
        | provide a payment method and either be turned loose on
        | the product or have their hand held.
 
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| What exactly does PeerTube solve? People want to comment and
| explore libraries of videos. This is just a protocol for
| independent video sharing platform instances, HTML5 supports
| video playback.
| 
| A lot of the instances are poor quality, with flickering buttons.
| They outright look like the player ui's that porn sites use....
| 
| Is there a way to explore content across all peer tube instances?
 
  | cowtools wrote:
  | Yes, it is federated. You can search, like, make comments from
  | one server to another so long as they are federated together.
  | 
  | Here is a pretty good search engine:
  | 
  | https://search.joinpeertube.org/
  | 
  | I usually try that if i'm trying to watch a video for free and
  | I can't find it anywhere else. There are are servers that just
  | re-upload documentaries and stuff.
 
    | powerhour wrote:
    | I searched for a common term, "Linux", and of the top 5
    | results only one worked -- the rest times out before any
    | content (html and all) loaded. On the first page, of the two
    | videos available only one began loading, however playback did
    | not begin for the minute or so I waited. Bummer.
    | 
    | This isn't a problem with the search engine, exactly, but
    | it'd be useful if it filtered out unavailable content.
 
      | cowtools wrote:
      | Interesting. I am sorry to hear that. You may be better off
      | going to a large instance that follows many other instances
      | and search for videos there. For example, kraut.zone seems
      | to index many other instances:
      | 
      | https://kraut.zone/search?sort=-views&searchTarget=search-
      | in...
      | 
      | You can find well-connected instances here, if you sort by
      | "Following":
      | 
      | https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?sort=-totalIns
      | t...
      | 
      | You might also need to enable WebRTC. I know I usually
      | leave it disabled for security reasons.
 
    | pipeline_peak wrote:
    | Ok great, I don't like hoping across 1000 instances, feels
    | messy and unsafe. Like mini 2006 YouTube's everywhere lol
 
      | cowtools wrote:
      | You stay on the same site. It fetches the video for you
      | from the other server. For example with this URL:
      | 
      | https://kraut.zone/w/aWCVkSQTXKJ1yuR6o8zjDY
      | 
      | Kraut.zone is fetching this guy's vlog from his personal
      | server. But you don't need to visit this random guy's site
      | yourself or run any of his JS in your browser. But if you
      | are really concerned about security you shouldn't even be
      | using JS in the first place. "Le Walled Garden" is not an
      | exception.
 
  | betwixthewires wrote:
  | Sepia search, and federated timelines.
  | 
  | I think a client that is able to subscribe to remote instances
  | client side (without an AP account somewhere) would
  | significantly improve the state of discover ability across
  | peertube servers.
 
    | cowtools wrote:
    | NewPipe supports this.
 
  | freedomben wrote:
  | This also addresses the problem of bandwidth being super
  | expensive and out of budget for small creators that want to
  | self host. Users watching it are also uploading fragments, so
  | if a video goes viral your AWS bill isn't gonna be $10,000 for
  | bandwidth.
  | 
  | It also gives some decentralization because the original source
  | can go completely offline, yet as long as there is a copy of
  | each fragment on somebody's machine, everyone can watch the
  | whole thing.
 
| hedora wrote:
| I don't understand what PeerTube is for, concretely. (I've read
| parts of your docs before, and understand what federation is.)
| 
| I would like to be able to host videos inexpensively, perhaps in
| an s3 bucket or on a raspberry pi. The free / cheap version needs
| to scale to at most 2-10 concurrent viewers (a more expensive
| version that scales indefinitely would be nice for commercial
| use).
| 
| It would be optionally password protected in a way that is client
| side encrypted (probably in a way that is transparent to the end
| user; such as via a key in a url, that loads a bit of javascript
| that fetches and decrypts the video).
| 
| That way, amazon or whoever won't accidentally decide my video is
| a pirated win95 iso or whatever. Also, the people in my videos
| won't (necessarily) have their images harvested for bulk
| survelliance.
| 
| I should have final say in whether the content is taken down (and
| own the domain name, in case I want to move to a new cloud
| provider).
| 
| It should be trivial to set up.
| 
| I get the impression that PeerTube meets zero of these
| requirements.
 
  | nonameiguess wrote:
  | S3 itself allows for client-side encryption. Get a bucket with
  | no public access and use your favorite encrypted messenger
  | service or email to send a pre-signed url and decryption key to
  | 2-10 of your friends.
 
  | cowtools wrote:
  | >I don't understand what PeerTube is for, concretely. (I've
  | read parts of your docs before, and understand what federation
  | is.)
  | 
  | I get the impression that it's for personal video sharing.
  | Technically competent users will host their own personal
  | instances and host instances for their communities. These
  | instances are federated into larger social networks where users
  | can interact across instances.
  | 
  | >I would like to be able to host videos inexpensively, perhaps
  | in an s3 bucket or on a raspberry pi. The free / cheap version
  | needs to scale to at most 2-10 concurrent viewers (a more
  | expensive version that scales indefinitely would be nice for
  | commercial use).
  | 
  | I do not think something proprietary like an s3 bucket would be
  | compatible with Peertube, but I have not maintained an
  | instance. The system works with webtorrent (a version of
  | BitTorrent that runs over WebRTC), so it depends whether the
  | concurrent viewers are all watching the same video or not
  | (because then they will seed the videos to each other using
  | webtorrent).
  | 
  | >It would be optionally password protected in a way that is
  | client side encrypted (probably in a way that is transparent to
  | the end user; such as via a key in a url, that loads a bit of
  | javascript that fetches and decrypts the video). That way,
  | amazon or whoever won't accidentally decide my video is a
  | pirated win95 iso or whatever.
  | 
  | The fact that your VPS host is untrustworthy and temperamental
  | is not peertube's fault. Consider a better VPS provider
  | perhaps.
  | 
  | >I should have final say in whether the content is taken down
  | (and own the domain name, in case I want to move to a new cloud
  | provider). >It should be trivial to set up.
  | 
  | These two things are in conflict. Merely getting ahold of a
  | domain name is non-trivial, although I suppose you could
  | operate it as a Tor onion service or something on the other end
  | of zooko's triangle.
 
    | hedora wrote:
    | > _The fact that your VPS host is untrustworthy and
    | temperamental is not peertube 's fault. Consider a better VPS
    | provider perhaps._
    | 
    | The US CLOUD Act ensures they're all untrustworthy (or on the
    | wrong side of an iron curtain).
    | 
    | >> _It should be trivial to set up._
    | 
    | > _These two things are in conflict. Merely getting ahold of
    | a domain name is non-trivial,_
    | 
    | OK, then no more difficult than setting up a raspberry pi or
    | hobby AWS account.
 
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| If there was a way to run ads on your instance then it'd become
| massive.
 
  | pipeline_peak wrote:
  | Would it really though? they don't have the interest of average
  | users.
 
    | ronsor wrote:
    | Ads interest creators, and users are interested in the
    | presence of content from creators they like.
 
    | hammyhavoc wrote:
    | Look at how incentivising running an instance made
    | cryptocurrencies a hot topic. Without some kind of
    | compensation, contributing hardware and bandwidth to an idea
    | like PeerTube means it will remain niche.
    | 
    | Likewise, cash for creators means better content and not
    | needing YouTube.
    | 
    | None of this should utilize crypto may I add. Stripe and
    | PayPal APIs are very comprehensive, especially for mass
    | payouts, and split payment systems.
 
      | ronsor wrote:
      | Maybe Stripe, but PayPal sucks more than most people
      | know[1][2] and only exists because it's really convenient
      | when you're not being screwed over.
      | 
      | [1]
      | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-13/paypal-
      | su...
      | 
      | [2] https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.paypal.com
 
        | hammyhavoc wrote:
        | Sure, this happens on every platform owned by a third-
        | party that gets enough users, it is a statistical
        | inevitability. Even crypto wallets aren't immune to being
        | manipulated. See Chivo.
        | 
        | FWIW, I've used PayPal since the 90s, I run a biz that
        | uses it, clients use it every day and have used it every
        | day for over a decade without any issues, and I have
        | personally sent several thousand PayPal Invoices over the
        | years. Automated billing also works just fine, far more
        | reliable than charging a card that will eventually
        | expire.
        | 
        | Further anecdote: whilst you point to PayPal, I've heard
        | of more people having their bank account frozen for
        | whatever reason, e.g. someone stole their card, suspected
        | fraud etc. We can point to any of these things as a worst
        | case scenario, but likely 99% of the time, it's working
        | as intended. PayPal's support has also been some of the
        | best to deal with when it comes to API queries.
 
| snoopy_telex wrote:
| I think the root issue for PeerTube is that video monetization
| has not been figured out. Established YouTubers won't switch away
| from existing revenue streams unless there's parity. New
| YouTubers will focus on building a business and will go where the
| money is.
| 
| Rock and a hard place. That's where I would focus on platform
| improvements though.
 
  | upupandup wrote:
  | You laid out a really good point here, advertisers with big
  | wallets are not going to bet their brand on a decentralized
  | video platform without any centralized moderation.
  | 
  | And without those large advertisers your CPM will be extremely
  | low which will just invite even more content aimed at capturing
  | that market (spam, low quality videos).
  | 
  | People forget that decentralization doesn't work well for some
  | industries, especially ones that rely on ad revenues
  | (centralized entities) that rely on centralized control over
  | audiences and content allowed on the platform.
  | 
  | There's a reason Youtube works so well and its because of its
  | censorship and AI led moderation to appease the big
  | advertisers. You can't rely on some regular joe advertising his
  | Token on PeerTube to continue paying in crypto and neither can
  | creators rely on PeerTube to be able to convert tokens on a
  | third party exchange that is facing insolvency.
  | 
  | It's amazing to me how quickly people forget the on-ramp and
  | off-ramp of money is still fiat, nobody is going to hold on to
  | PeerTube's tokens for decades.
 
  | YurgenJurgensen wrote:
  | This is a manifestation of how we've sleepwalked a situation
  | where Google probably should have fallen foul of antitrust
  | legislation but haven't.
  | 
  | They have a pretty tight control over video hosting, video
  | monetisation and video discovery, making it impossible for an
  | incumbent to enter into one of those markets without
  | challenging Google in all three.
 
    | akersten wrote:
    | > They have a pretty tight control over video hosting, video
    | monetisation and video discovery, making it impossible for an
    | incumbent to enter into one of those markets
    | 
    | You're kind of putting the cart before the horse here in
    | asserting that those are three independent markets. I could
    | just as easily say that restaurants participate in the "food
    | cooking, table bussing, and patron seating" markets, and that
    | it's way too hard for my upstart kitchen to compete in the
    | food cooking market due to Cheesecake Factory having such
    | tight control over the seating and serving markets. But the
    | reality is, maybe my cuisine just sucks, and the singular
    | market won't entertain it.
 
  | raybb wrote:
  | I see how this is true for programmatic ads. But do you think
  | the same goes for sponsored videos? If sponsored videos are
  | paid for X number of views why wouldn't that work for peertube?
 
    | snoopy_telex wrote:
    | Getting a realistic number of views out of a p2p service
    | is... difficult. It's too easy to fudge. Youtube acts like a
    | neutral party that won't cheat, because it has no reason to.
    | There's no neutral party in peer tube to provide the count.
 
      | dane-pgp wrote:
      | > Youtube acts like a neutral party that won't cheat,
      | because it has no reason to.
      | 
      | Actually it has a huge reason to, and sometimes large
      | advertising companies do get accused of such cheating. [0]
      | 
      | You're right, though, that getting accurate numbers is hard
      | even for companies with large budgets to invest in stopping
      | "fake" clicks, which usually involves all sorts of
      | fingerprinting and surveillance tech.
      | 
      | Trying to recreate all that in a transparent and privacy-
      | preserving way, across a network of nodes in different
      | jurisdictions, and with no contractual obligations, is...
      | well, if not impossible, then let's just say it's going to
      | need a _lot_ more blockchain to make it work. ;)
      | 
      | [0] https://www.marketing-interactive.com/facebook-sued-
      | for-alle...
 
    | hombre_fatal wrote:
    | I don't know how Youtube ads work, but I would think it's
    | like Adsense where you can make money long before you are big
    | enough to attract sponsors.
    | 
    | Platform-level ads are surely for everyone not big enough to
    | attract sponsors.
 
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