Submitted 3 weeks ago by SolarPunker@slrpnk.net to fediverse@lemmy.world
I read many comments on how PeerTube isn’t sustainable as a YouTube alternative and, while it’s certainly true right now, are we shure it will be the same in the near future?
The platform is growing and the new mobile app is making great progress; I can certainly see some people investing in a major instance some day, accelerating the platform adoption.
Like others have said, it’s way more resource intensive than text based systems. Even discounting higher res vids, if you go to any random larger YT channel and download all their videos in 144p 480p and 720p it’ll be quite a lot larger than you might expect. Sure, if you’re serious about it you could get an array of hard drives and a small server, but you’re talking hundreds of bucks and lots of upkeep. Outsource it to a VPS and AWS buckets and you’ve still got upkeep but now you’ve added an extra 0 to your bill.
There’s not enough charitable nerds on the internet to host even a fraction of 1% of Youtube. It’s even worse if self hosting instances is pushed. Even as a fellow tech nerd, no way I’m hosting my own instance just so I can share a video once in a blue moon. Something that always gets my goat in fediverse discourse is when people always jump to saying something along the lines of “just host your own” then wonder why AP went from ~2.5M users to 0.8M users.
There’s also some Fediverse specific issues that hold back a more mainstream audience. There’s some fringe political stuff on both sides of the isle which can pretty easily scare off people, and defederation combined with peertube’s more siloed approach makes discovery near nil. (can’t see content from remote peertube instances unless somebody has already subscribed to that channel on the remote instance from your local instance AFAIK).
Then there’s the new platform (or in this case many platforms connected via one protocol) issues. Lack of users, limited/no monetization, limited development/support, and very few pros + a lot of cons at first glance from somebody who doesn’t consider tech a hobby and is comparing it to established platforms.
Yes, yes, you named the benefits and convenience of a centralized system.
Federalized systems require individual federated maintenance, and that comes with some challenges, but maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world if the random videos you uploaded to youtube that never get any views eventually disappeared… Maybe the planet shouldn’t bear the burnt of indefinitely holding those videos in replicated backed up storage forever. Maybe that’s not valuable data we need for future civilizations.
What if a valuable creator dies and noone is there to run their instance? These are important things to consider and think through so we can solve them. Maybe the answer is a community driven peer node replication?
These aren’t unsolvable hurdles, they’ve been solved already.
Anyone can backup any other peertube instance. But that of course comes at a cost.
Running an actively used Peertube instance is a lot harder than, for example, a Lemmy instance. Videos take up a lot more storage than text. Not only that, the videos also need to be processed and then served. Who will keep paying for the monthly server bills?
Then there’s monetization. Most YouTube creators are there because they make a living out of YouTube. There is no such thing on PeerTube. They would need to solely rely on donations.
The ideal PeerTube network would be where every somewhat big content creator ran their own instance and maybe a few general instances for smaller content creators that are regularly donated to.
If YouTube ever gets killed by Google, don’t expect many people to come here.
I can see a future where big YouTube conten creators taking some independance and start monetizing a peertube instance with a real infrastructure and not just a cheap VPS. Maybe I am utopist.
It’s not about adoption. It’s about money.
Superfamousguy (a youtube user I just ficticiously created to represent every single big name youtuber) doesn’t make videos in their room talking about whatever, and uploads whenever.
These guys have a strict schedule. They need to shoot today. Edit tonight, upload tomorrow exactly at 11am. Because their users are conditioned to expect those videos at those times. So they get sponsored, and now advertisers are promised an average viewcount on the dominant video platform at a certain time. They’re paying superfamousguy money for those promises.
It’s not a hobby, it’s a job. And advertisers are not going to be willing to touch peertube because it’s handled by so many fragmented cases that it’s impossible for peertube to have the stability of youtube.
So, I’m not saying peertube can’t grow. I’m just saying its decentralized nature will scare most advertisers away. Without the advertisers, superfamousguy can’t make a living. And at that point it doesn’t matter if peertube has twice as many viewers as youtube. Without money, these professionals cant fund their crew, they can’t make videos, and thus stick to youtube.
Really, Google and Amazon are the only players large enough to make an alternative and host it.
Both companies should just be nationalized by their countries they have their HQ in, or globalized by the UN.
These are integral parts of our world and society, we shouldn’t allow them to be owned and controlled by private intrests.
I never heard that. I also think Peertube is doing great. And development has been constant, we get new features all the times, for years now.
Yeah and the arrival of the mobile app with the ability to log into your account is a huge step.
The next step would be to be able to lock some content for people who are not supporting creators (to motivate creators to post on peertube and make money with it).
Something like a Patreon? That'd probably be useful to some people in addition to the already existing donation option.
Is this already requested? They have a page for that: https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/ and listen to our feedback. So if that's not already on there, you might want to add the idea. (I haven't checked.)
There is already a plug-in that supports that, along with Stripe integration.
A Kodi client that allows seeking would be great.
I hope to see people like Lewis Rossmann erc. Start posting there
FUTO has an instance
I personally see Peertube as something that’d be better as a small-scale, reasonably private way of storing and sharing videos if you’re not interested in monetization or views. For example, documentation for a passion project.
For everything else, a different form of decentralization makes more sense, such as Odysee (though we’ll see how the Arweave migration goes).
‘shure’ is a misspelling I have never encountered.
Corrected, ty. I’m a non-english-speaker musician :D
I’ve recently caught myself making this spelling mistake recently, but I think it has only happened since I interacted with a company that makes microphones named Shure, so I blame them.
The sustainability argument stems from technological constraints. YouTube as a company has no problem sustaining millions of dollars in server infrastructure to serve media. Most self-hosters do not.
I don’t agree with this perspective but also don’t know enough about server infrastructure or video streaming to argue against it.
Yep not sustainable. Think of how much diak space YouTube is using. Just was reading this morning how peertube instances limit new users and that’s ok. If everyone can’t upload videos it we’ll never replace YouTube.
This is just 12 different kinds of incorrect.
Think of how much diak space YouTube is using
Disk space will be the least of your concerns when running a service like YT.
If everyone can’t upload videos it we’ll never replace YouTube.
Disk space is quite cheap and I’m sure high quality vids could take a very small space if NPU processed and upscaled.
Disk space is relatively cheap, until you also count redundancy, backups, storage hardware, utilities, and bandwidth.
Hell, using consumer grade, free tools (handbrake) I can convert a DVD to mkv and reduce the file size upwards of 75%, and still be perfectly viewable on a current 65" TV.
I can only imagine the capabilities of Google/YouTube. It would be fascinating to see a high level diagram of how they handle a video.
I have zero faith in the team behind it. Unless that changes, I doubt that peertube will ever become what it wants/needs to be.
What’s the issue with the team?
OP didn’t get his feature request.
Yeah, I’d like to know as well, I thought Framasoft was pretty well regarded?
Sorry to take what seems like such a strong stance but they don’t have what it takes to build a successful YouTube-ish platform imo. This is based on my experience in the field and my observations of their output over the years. I know it sounds like a cop out but I don’t have the time to discuss further rn.
Honestly, I’d be happy to learn that I was wrong. I have and will continue to root for any federated YouTube competitor. I just don’t think it’s going to be from FS.
Does peertube actually host anything or is it just a frontend? All I’ve ever seen people linking to it are videos from YouTube, using PeerTube as the interface.
PeerTube is a video sharing platform, just like YouTube or Vimeo. Videos you watch on PeerTube is hosted on a PeerTube instance.
It’s a backend.
nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Hosting video requires a lot more resources than hosting text, hyperlinks, or even pictures. It might be too much for individuals to self host video on a scale that could even distantly resemble how we use youtube today.
Then again, maybe there are ways to make that burden smaller. IIRC Peertube does do some p2p stuff to try and share the burden a bit but I’ve also heard that it’s not really feasible to rely on that to scale.
lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
Yes: encode on lower resolutions.
Most of the videos on Youtube don’t ever need to be 4K. They don’t even need to be 1080p. Heck, most don’t even need 720p! Things like music videos, where what’s important is the music, orthings like old TV broadcasts or play rips of old consoles, where the source barely gets to 360p, can be encoded to 360p or even 244p without any suffering (I played Monster Hunter on the 3DS for years and I can attest 244p can do great works of magic).
This mixes wonderfully with Peertube’s idea about hosting your own instance. If you are hosting your own video storage, you’ll want to maximize the amount of stuff you can throw into it. If someone complains that your videos aren’t 1080p, tell them to go to
/donate.phpand do their part.ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
How does the p2p work? I thought there was a bittorrent-like aspect to it but what you’re describing sounds different.
ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
As far as I know the p2p only potentially applies when >1 global users are watching a video simultaneously.
meldrik@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
You are right, but the users also need to be watching the video at the same resolution. A PeerTube instance can also function as a peer.