FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world 2 months ago
PeerTube needs content more than it needs anything else. There’s no reason to use a mobile app if there is nothing to watch on it anyway.
Always ready to complain. All these things need to exist in order to gain traction. You need to have content and multiple ways to view it. Complaining that there’s an additional way to view it is just unnecessary negativity.
If you think there isn’t enough content, be the change you want to see: make it.
I’m not complaining, I’m stating a fact. Also, the argument “if you can’t find the content you want, you need to make it” is stupid. I can go to YouTube and find content about sealing a concrete patio. I can’t on peertube, so I need to figure out how and make a video on how to do it? That’s stupid.
“That’s stupid”. Great argument. “This content doesn’t exist on $platform ergo $platform is stupid”. “Be the change you want to see is stupid because it’s stupid!”.
Can’t wait for the content you’re going to contribute to peertube.
My friend, I fear you are terminally online.
He never said peertube is stupid? He just said it lacks content.
I also feel like the algorithm is kinda brutal. Even if there’s good stuff I’m not sure I’d ever really find it
Same with Loops.
That’s unfortunate to hear, I haven’t really used loops at all but I hope they can figure it out to a point of adequacy
The problem is that it is just a fundamentally un-profitable platform for creators. Ads don’t work (… period but also) because of the decentralized nature of it. Any instance/frontend that added ads would be shunned in favor of those who don’t. And any video hosted only on a single “instance” would rapidly cost way too much if it ever became moderately popular.
Which means there is no reason for Content Creators to… care. So the best it can ever get is “early youtube”. And people SAY they want early youtube videos but everyone is deeply spoiled by the difference between a video that was made in a week of after work tweaking versus weeks of full time planning and editing.
Which is why peertube in general is one of the “fediverse” products that… I feel really weird about. I forget if Floatplane/Weapons of Guntube/whatever use it or something they rolled themselves, but this really feels like the kind of software project that has the end state of getting “adopted” by a corporation and the major devs hired on as consultants.
Yeah, if it wants to actually compete with YouTube it would have to have monetization. I’ve talked about that on Lemmy before, I agree.
But at least with a good algorithm it could be like old youtube where folks can speak to the world and share things in video format
The issue with “Algorithms” is that you need a lot of data to generate recommendations… which tends to mean centralized (or a LOT of data scraping).
Which is why stuff like Nebula and Floatplane and Ian McCollum’s latest “apolitical” side hustle all are still 100% dependent on Youtube. Hell… I actually still subscribe to Legal Eagle and NileRed on Youtube so that I know when they have a new Nebula video.
I think you do bring up important points, and ads are indeed a de-facto impossibility (even though, technically, there’s nothing stopping someone creating a plug-in that shows ads, the dynamics you describe would make platforms using it isolated quickly). I would add that, personally, I don’t want to ever have PeerTube go down the ad rabbit hole, it comes with a lot of dynamics that almost make enshittification inevitable - although I heard some Fedi platforms had some success with very selected and limited sale of hand-curated advertisement spots, that really isn’t scalable in the same way.
But while this makes PeerTube uninteresting to the really big players that want or need to maximise their income - I think there is still a lot of potential left. Two of the other big revenue streams are still available - sponsored segments in videos can work basically the very same as on YT. And Liberapay/Patreon/Ko-Fi are still available as well, with Framasoft mentioning looking into enabling better integration for services like it in the future. Another possibility I imagine could work, would be Nebula-like platforms utilising the technology eventually, with local content on the server being fenced-off to paying subscribers, but those registered local users still able to also reach the bigger, free network of videos in the Fediverse beyond that.
There are a lot of mid-sized YT channels, and channels not wanting to compromise on satisfying ad guidelines, that basically only make pennies from YTs normal monetisation strategies and completely rely on sponsoring and patrons. For those, PeerTube is a genuine possibility in the future, after more organic growth. And that growth will have to follow the usual stages of alternative platforms, with currently enthusiasts and hobbyists being the “moss and lichen” to enable growth of “grasses” in the future, to use a metaphor.
this really feels like the kind of software project that has the end state of getting “adopted” by a corporation and the major devs hired on as consultants.
I can understand the fear, but from what I know of Framasoft - if they were prone to sell out, they would not have “wasted” decades on their passion projects, and stubbornly delaying to do more dynamic, non-local, non-French marketing of their “de-google-ify” suite.
Yes. Discoverability is the real key. Which also is not at all addressed on peertube and, as I mentioned above, mostly still comes from youtube for the creators who have branched out to other platforms.
A Michael Reeves can get away with just having a kofi and making massive bank because of how big he has gotten… from youtube. Whereas even a Not An Engineer has a channel that lives or dies by collabs and shoutouts from other youtubers (I do suspect he has an independent source of income though).
Also… you put even Not An Engineer on your peertube instance and he is going to consume a disproportionate amount of bandwidth. Let alone a Michael Reeves who would crash the entire fediverse during his annual video.
What you are describing is “if you build it, they will come”. Which is patently false. Ad revenue gets worse and worse every year but it usually is essential to even offsetting parts and labor for a video for smaller creators. I think it was Gamers Nexus that discussed the different tiers of monetization in the context of the honey scandal, but the basic idea is that ads are what let you know if a channel has any legs and referral links are what keep you alive until you are big enough for a sponsor to care.
Which… is also the issue. The kind of sponsors who would fund a peertube video (and just look around at how fediverse folk view ANY form of monetization of the content they consume…) are going to be more bluechew than not, if you catch my drift. And they aren’t going to pay much.
Which gets back to: Peertube as a concept is great for official tutorials and MAYBE blog posts by “nobodies”. Why would anyone go out of their way to join in decentralized hosting of that? And while it is conceptually a great way to “can’t stop the signal” an important video… it either rapidly becomes liveleaks or we see the same thing that happened with Lemmy where the instance owners get a phone call from their local FBI equivalent and rapidly say “I don’t want that smoke”.
But Peertube as something people would even want to browse or create Content for? I have yet to see any path toward that that isn’t “Well, people really love the ideologies of FOSS so they’ll do it out of the goodness of their heart”
Hmm, I think we have vastly different perspectives on what PeerTube has to become to be a worthwhile product, because I agree with a lot of what you said, but I don’t fully see what the problem is and don’t think the ultimate conclusion - which seems to be “No one would want to produce and/or browse content on there” - is true. I think the basic issue is that you seem to have the maximalist goal of wanting PeerTube to be at similar numbers to YouTube, and missing that, you don’t see anyone finding worth in it - so I will argue against that point, hoping I did not misread you there.
A small thing to start out with, but it is something I have definitely noticed while running an instance these past months, and something people underestimate I think - concerning:
you put even Not An Engineer on your peertube instance and he is going to consume a disproportionate amount of bandwidth. Let alone a Michael Reeves who would crash the entire fediverse during his annual video.
While taken as-fact if those number of viewers just appeared right now outside of organic growth, it might be true, I am not aware of scaling tests that go that large. But PeerTube is ridiculously scalable in bandwidth, thanks to the Peer2Peer nature. For the same reason many thousands of people can download 4k movies and shows concurrently via torrents with just a few dedicated seedboxes, PeerTube can scale bandwidth really, really well. My server has ~300GB reserved to automatically mirror and seed trending, new and popular videos, for example, so it is also not just home internet connections helping with bandwidth security. So I think you are underestimating the scalability here.
The real costly part is storage, bandwidth is surprisingly affordable considering the project we are talking about - the influx in audience a “big creator” could mean to an instance, as well as with it potential support in donations both directly and indirecty, could very well outweigh the addional costs (again - mostly storage). More generally as another anecdote about how scaleable PeerTube is thanks to the underlying tech - Mastodon has been much more of a head-scratcher in scalability for my server resources (A bit of config changes helped there, thankfully, but it is still far less efficient) - and that is with just me myself as a user on there at the moment, compared to ~50 active users on my PeerTube instance, including people uploading videos.
And:
Ad revenue gets worse and worse every year but it usually is essential to even offsetting parts and labor for a video for smaller creators. I think it was Gamers Nexus that discussed the different tiers of monetization in the context of the honey scandal, but the basic idea is that ads are what let you know if a channel has any legs and referral links are what keep you alive until you are big enough for a sponsor to care.
I don’t know Gamer’s Nexus, and how their numbers broke down, so I have no real grounds of questioning their logic. On the other hand, I do know of a few channels I used to watch on YT publishing their numbers in community posts. Those numbers definitely made me think, that channels that make proper money from ads that would be essential in any way, are not what I would call “small” at all. And I am a bit confused - first you mention it is essential income, then you mention it is in fact mostly useful as a metric for measuring feasibility? I think I may have misread something there.
Which gets back to: Peertube as a concept is great for official tutorials and MAYBE blog posts by “nobodies”. Why would anyone go out of their way to join in decentralized hosting of that? And while it is conceptually a great way to “can’t stop the signal” an important video… it either rapidly becomes liveleaks or we see the same thing that happened with Lemmy where the instance owners get a phone call from their local FBI equivalent and rapidly say “I don’t want that smoke”.
I’m assuming I missed a valid scandal here that led to closing of an instance, but - Lemmy (and PieFed, and mBin) is very much alive and we are discussing on it. It is even a better place for some niche content in the FLOSS sphere, than Reddit is right now. So, I am not certain what exactly you mean by the consequences of something happening to Lemmy?
But Peertube as something people would even want to browse or create Content for? I have yet to see any path toward that that isn’t “Well, people really love the ideologies of FOSS so they’ll do it out of the goodness of their heart”
“Well, people really love the ideologies of FOSS so they’ll do it out of the goodness of their heart” is indeed part of the first wave of the ecosystem. And roughly four years ago, when I first had a look at PeerTube, that was all that was on there - and illegal stuff, and crypto grifters, and conspiracy nuts banned from everywhere else. So at that time, I think you would have been right on the money with the LiveLeak comparison, I could not stand to stay back then, even as a FLOSS fanatic.
Since then, the ecosystem has grown massively - makertube.net and spectra.tv for example have a lot of just passionate people that enjoy making and documenting their projects. There’s a bit of a surge of just channels wanting a backup independent of big tech, partially because of the Boycott US movement. Recently, the largest German tech media outlet, heise, have started up their own instance for all their video channels, because they realised that techies are actually on the Fediverse and those are the people buying their magazines. One I couldn’t check myself, but Framasoft have mentioned in their FAQ, that there are some French organisations that host with PeerTube simply for the sake of data sovereignty and lessening dependence (I can’t confirm the scale here - but I have definitely seen a lot of professional level French stuff on PeerTube I could not enjoy, sadly, due to the language barrier). So, the ecosystem has already grown from the days of just being LiveLeak + hardcore Richard Stallman worshippers. Maybe I should adjust my metaphor from the current stage being lichen, and there actually already being a bit of grasses. Nothing on the level of the really big YT channels yet, but definitely a few on the “professionals with a dedicated community” level already.
Every bit of growth makes it potentially [more] interesting for any non-ideologically motivated content creator that wants an additional audience they may not get if they publish exclusively on YouTube. So that is one entry point, that can eventually become relevant to people beyond those that just find the idea interesting - or are driven by paranoia or idealism. That is slow, organic growth with occasional boom-bust cycles, much like with other Fediverse services - but it is growth, beyond just idealists.
And audience-wise, it already is a fitting niche for people you disregarded - people like me who genuinely do like old YouTube. I am still watching YT, there is some quality content that is simply not available elsewhere, like Majuular’s amazing Ultima retrospective which released its latest entry just today. But I have reduced my time on YouTube massively, and I’ve genuinely grown so tired of some of the tropes that have become impossible to miss after I started to spend more time on PeerTube. Artificial lengthening of videos for watch time engagement for example, blue-balling important information for more engagement. “Leave a comment” just for the sake of engagement and the algorithm - often even to the annoyance of the creators themselves who have to hamper their creativity to fit a formula. The several layers of post-ironic clickbait (sadly, that is also present on PeerTube, but to a lesser degree). I know you are fully aware of all those things and they simply don’t outweigh the problems for you, but they are creating an active audience for the PeerTube ecosystem even now, without any of the bigger channels.
So, I guess in the end all I can say is that I don’t share your perspective, both in having PeerTube fully supplanting YouTube as a (necessary) goal and in seeing no potential for the platform beyond tutorials and “nobodies”. None of us has a crystal ball, of course. I might be wrong - but I definitely see more potential than you do, I guess mostly because I have seen it grow and keep growing, in underlying tech and in participating community, over the past years.
not all of us care about profit. or at least not in the shove promotions in your face youtube status quo way.
And good for you.
But it is the fundamental issue with art. Art needs funding whether that is a patron or a tip jar or whatever. Canvas and paint costs money. Being able to spend an extra afternoon looking at a landscape costs money. Having time to edit and revise your script costs money. And so forth.
And same for youtube. It is the difference between being able to “get it right” versus just using the footage you have and “making it work”
good for me, like i have money? assuming a lot bub
thanks for sharing about funding and youtube amd repairs. i agree, and you sound cool.
my point is that federated services should be source of truth, and that we can federate to corporate platforms as needed.
for example i use Discord cuz people are there. but i do important stuff in Matrix these days, and copy/paste to Discord as needed. that way we control our work and what is put into the Discord system instead of it being the default. this is my aspiration, migrations take a while.
I know people use YouTube differently, but for me it always was a platform for “video sharing”. I don’t really watch YouTubers, but use it for funny videos, stuff from our publicly funded broadcast channels, music videos. So I guess I am not really using it for channels that require ads. Also I do not watch ads at all at any time due to ad block, and never would.
I was a streamer for an incredibly popular game, I had millions of hours of watch time.
The total amount I made for the thousands of hours I invested is $0.00
My costs were in the thousands, when I consider the extra I paid for high-speed internet, computer upgrades, microphones, blah blah blah
People are a bunch of whining little leeching bitches.
Everyone can shut the fuck up because nobody will support a creator.
I don’t know, saw a “creator” who is funding her endkess cruise ship journeys using YT, and all she taks about how she funds her cruise ship journeys using YT
Sounds like a good gig!
I’ve been playing video games for 40 years, where can I get my money?
There is now enough interesting content that I find myself spending more and more time on peertube. The trick is finding it I guess. Sepia search does help but it’s not perfect. I’ve found that following the #peertube and #livestream hashtags on mastodon is a good way to catch a livestream or find people promoting their channel on fedi.
Same. Theres a lot of good stuff out there now.
To be honest, I had the feeling it is lopsided the other way around at the moment: There are quite a few good and passionate content creators, lacking in an audience and interaction. I mean - sure - it does not have the amount of content of a big tech platform like YT, and not enough to binge watch stuff all day long, but I think lack of an active audience is at the moment more pressing - as is discoverability. If not using outside channels - like promoting on their Mastodon accounts primarily - or using places like !peertube@lemmy.world or !peertube@lemmy.wtf to discover things, a lot of worthwhile content right now flies under the radar. And that is excluding unofficial mirrors of YT content, which I tend to avoid.
On the other hand - I know lack of a mobile app has come up at several times in comments on there, and I have myself by now anecdotally heard from a few people wanting to try PeerTube and then being weirded out by the unfinished mobile app in ways that were unrecoverable. In addition, adding more know-how and codebase for mobile applications into the greater FLOSS ecosphere and Fediverse is good in its own right, there is a severe lack of it.
I wonder why almost no one uses PWAs ? (Now that Mozilla supports PWAs)
PWA = Progressive Web-App
Learn me more! If this means I can have a YT like experience with PT, I would love it. Can you explain how it’s done or what site to use?
Mozilla has documentations on it
I don’t know what that means either.
Plus some sort of payout system.
TeddE@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s a chicken and egg issue. Nobody will create content on a platform with inferior usability.
Hard to capture that lightning
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
It’s a chicken and egg issue for sure, but I think you’ve got the wrong egg.
Nobody will create content on a platform with few viewers. Nobody will be a viewer on a platform with few content creators.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think they need an application that simultaneously posts to YouTube and PeerTube. So creators can effortlessly post to both the existing platform with all the viewers while also adding content to the alternative.
Similar how OBS can stream to YouTube and Twitch simultaneously.
paige@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
The channel sync is awesome and very stable.
Most of the creators on Canadian Civil use it. The issue is if you just dual-post you don’t get the benefit that PeerTube offers of a place to test and reupload your video.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
That does sound like it would help.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 2 months ago
And there will be even fewer users with a bad or lacking interface. It certainly does not solve the problem, but it helps reduce barriers for entry for new users.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
I mean that’s true but I don’t think that’s part of the chicken and egg cycle, as you can improve UX before getting users too
ImmersiveMatthew@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Is the egg not income or does peer tube pay creators now?
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
Income and viewers are the same egg. You can put up sponsor segments but they’re no good if nobody is watching.