I like a fediverse YouTube alternative.
That’s PeerTube. The problem is that hosting video is a lot more expensive than hosting text, so finding the funds is a lot harder.
Comment on YouTube Tests Showing Ads When You Pause a Video, Calls it ''Pause Ads''
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 6 months agoBoth seem/are single point of failure choices. I like a fediverse YouTube alternative.
tal@lemmy.today 6 months ago
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
The problem is that hosting video is a lot more expensive than hosting text,
Which is why there aren’t any effective competitors to youtube.
Several have tried to directly compete, and they ran out of money.
In addition to the costs of the infrastructure, there are other issues.
In order to get to the scale where youtube would even care, you would need to have a lot of content that viewers want to watch. And to attract enough good video creators to post exclusively on your platform, you need a way for them to earn some money from their effort.
Yes, Odysee and Vimeo exist, but they’re pretty niche, and each has major limitations.
Odysee has a tiny audience, and they “pay” in their own crypto, which is very hard to convert into actual money that you can buy food with.
And Vimeo has some odd rules about what thay want on their site. And creators have to pay to upload at any useful scale. Plus their search and suggestion system is almost useless.
tal@lemmy.today 6 months ago
It might be possible to compete in an area where YouTube (presently) has content restrictions. I assume that YouTube doesn’t allow outright porn, and that that’s how PornTube and friends can exist.
Dangerous business to enter, though, because if one day YouTube decides to enter the market (or decides to create a differently-branded service that shares infrastructure) that does do porn, I assume that that’s gonna put those smaller competitors in danger of getting wiped out.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Those content restrictions aren’t because youtube itself has any moral objections, it’s a combination of what the law allows (see COPA related fines changing content rules) and what (most) big budget advertisers are willing to appear beside.
The previous "adpocalypse"s have shaped a large portion of youtube’s content policies.
Any other platform hoping to take market share from youtube will have to deal with the same pressures if they expect to pay their bills once the VC money runs out.
hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Odysee is blockchain-based. So there’s that.
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yes, that’s not the same.
hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I know.
fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Meh. Blockchain just has such a stink to it these days.
Odysee uses the LBRY network which is a decentralised content hosting network, which is pretty great really.
LBRY happens to use blockchain tech but lets not talk about that.
Cqrd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Good luck getting a lot of people with a absolute shit ton of spare bandwidth
fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Peertube is an attempt at solving this.
You make content you’ve watched available to others wanting to watch it.
The basic idea being that everyone provides a similar amount of upstream bandwidth as the amount they consume.
Ofc content creators and some servers will provide a lot more to cover any shortfall.
tal@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Two issues:
Most people have asymmetric connections, can download faster than upload.
It’s cheaper to provide bandwidth to a datacenter connected to the backbone than it is on an arbitrary device at someone’s house.
Like, from a purely-financial standpoint, if one wants to pay for access with bandwidth and storage, it’d make more sense to have a structure where people somehow contribute to running PeerTube instances in datacenters, as you get more bang for your buck.
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well here we are sharing textual communication on fedi. It’s only a slight stretch. Like maybe I will share space by “liking” a video. Or maybe you have to explicitly click a “serve” or “seed” button. It’s not pie in the sky and it would eliminate all ads and other shit videos…you like a video ? Ok share it or download it if you want.
hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Text takes less storage space then videos.
bamboo@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Just to add, image hosting for lemmy servers is also an issue already. Afaik they aren’t federated because even the occasional image will significantly increase the amount of storage required on instances.
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Okay 👍
Wiz@midwest.social 6 months ago
There are some reasonably priced and free PeerTube servers for hosting content.