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.
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.
gigachad@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 1 day ago
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.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
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”
AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 1 day ago
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.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
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.
No, my point is that there is no reason for a Content Creator to actually put effort into Peertube (or even the youtube alternatives that they aren’t co-owners of). And there is no path toward that.
For the same reason many thousands of people can download 4k movies and shows concurrently via torrents with just a few dedicated seedboxes
People run seedboxes because they get something out of it: Private tracker access.
You apparently are happy to donate your bandwidth. Good for you. I suspect you would think otherwise when a video “goes viral” and you suddenly get a call from your ISP telling you they have decided you are hosting a business and that you need to pay for a different internet plan. PLENTY of people learned this the fun way back in the 90s/00s.
The real costly part is storage, bandwidth is surprisingly affordable considering the project we are talking about
In the context of file hosting, “bandwidth” is usually used as a catch all for both the raw bandwidth of a single node AND the requirements of a CDN. Otherwise that server gets hugged to death, everyone is angry, blah blah blah. Again, this is a lesson we learned in the 00s.
he 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
Ah, so now content creators are working specifically to support Peertube. Which means their effective operating costs have just skyrocketed because now they are paying for their own hosting AND paying for all the time and materials to make the video in the first place.
Which is WHY Youtube became so massive. Paying for your own hosting is REALLY expensive and tears into already thin margins for the vast majority of Content Creators.
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 i
This board is on the dot world instance. Back when Luigi allegedly popped that guy, dot world was leading the charge in terms of complete nonsense CYAs to protect the instance from getting a knock from the FBI equivalent. Similarly, I have my account on the dot zip instance and we have very weird rules regarding the UK because of their data privacy laws.
Or, to be an old again: Every even semi-public FTP server goes the same way. Everything is great. Then you suddenly realize that porn has appeared out of nowhere. And, best case scenario, it is the kind of porn that gets people arrested (because it can get SO much worse…). The same issue came up with file sharing back in the day. And it is why a lot of lemmy/mastodon instances have very specific rules regarding image hosting and NSFW content.
It is great you have had a good experience. Others won’t and will rapidly realize just what they are doinating their bandwidth to.
And audience-wise, it already is a fitting niche for people you disregarded
Great. I didn’t “disregard” anyone. But you have to understand that You Don’t Matter. Because all those things that you (and I) hate about modern video content? That is done to make money.
Google are constantly running analytics to figure out what length of video is most profitable for them in terms of storage, bandwidth, and monetizability. Content Creators are constantly figuring out what Google wants to get a video promoted to the front page AND what will make people not only click that video on the front page but also keep watching so that they can get the metrics that get them those sponsorships.
And its great that you and the people who like Peertube don’t care about that. But that gets back to the same exact point I have been making the entire time: if creating content for a platform can’t even meaningfully offset the cost of creating that content in the first place, the VAST majority of people won’t and you are basically left with the independently wealthy people.
Already mentioned it elsewhere in the thread but this is a story as old as history itself. Creating art costs money. Canvas and paint costs money. Having the time to stay another day to look at that landscape for just a bit longer costs money.
Having a good camera and mic costs money. Having the newest fanciest cell phone with the auto stabilizer so you don’t need a rig costs money. Having the time to learn and use that video editing software costs money. Having the time to keep your head clear enough to really do a solid edit costs money.
And same with the Maker Youtube style content or even the DIY content. Having that second CO2 canister to do another run? Or even just having a piece of wood and a clamp so you can show how that dishwasher airgap actually works without needing to try to angle a camera into a tight corner.
Hell… being able to Go To The Zoo on a less popular day? Guess what that costs?
And taht is the fundamental issue. Yes, there will be people who make content and some of it will be genuinely awesome. But there is also a pretty massive ceiling that will basically mean only independently wealthy people have the time and resources to do a “good video”. And… we kind of actually saw that in the early days of youtube where a LOT of the old hats are from rich families or have cash from their startup being bought and so forth.
What peertube (and basically all the youtube alternatives) lack is any way to move on from that.
To reiterate and expand: The life cycle of a successful youtuber (or twitch streamer or whatever) is:
- Create content at severe personal cost
- Qualify for ad revenue. Offset some of that cost but still require a day job. Gauge popularity based on ad revenue
- Qualify for a referral link for online retailers. Actually make genuinely good money that can potentially lead to this becoming a full time job. Well, not so much after the honey nonsense is likely going to make all this go away but…
- Qualify for sponsorships at decent rates. THIS is where things can reasonably become a full time job and you can start making true Art rather than fitting a build in between your normal job
- Get popular enough that you can get enough of a following that people actually WILL “just put some money in the tip jar”
Peertube et al only really exist starting on step 4 (because you can bet most instance owners would strip or hijack those referral links…). And… no company people will want to deal with is going to be sponsoring content that goes to a fraction of the audience that is also predisposed to consider any form of marketing or capitalism a personal insult.
Which basically leaves 5. Which… we are already seeing. linus media group LOVES to pretend Floatplane (which might actually use Peertube under the hood, I forget) is some mega successful business. But he still does youtube content front and center and Floatplane mostly exists for him to profit off a few other youtubers and to encourage his rabid fanbase to give him more money. And there will likely be other creators who decide to “support Peertube” while still primarily making Youtube content. And… they will just crash the ecosystem while getting nerd/FOSS cred.
suswrkr@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
not all of us care about profit. or at least not in the shove promotions in your face youtube status quo way.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
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”
suswrkr@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
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.
Krudler@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
hanrahan@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
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
6nk06@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I’ve been playing video games for 40 years, where can I get my money?
Cris_Color@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
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.