There is a decentralized YouTube alternative.
Video hosting is notoriously expensive. PeerTube circumvents this problem, because videos aren’t stored on some single server, which would cause high bandwidth cost for the server operator, but largely by the users after they watched them, similar to BitTorrent. This way, the cost of video hosting is distributed among the clients, by using their internet connectivity for sharing.
I believe that PeerTube is an interesting project, and I’d ask you to check it out. It’s cool.
Similar to Lemmy, it’s not a single running server, but rather a software that can be used to set up a server. So there’s many instances. I’m still exploring which instances are interesting. If you have any recommendations, I’d like to hear them.
With most videos on Peertube the server still has to do nearly all of the work. Optionally users can contribute bandwidth while they are watching but not after; how would that even work on a website that you close after watching?
Its a neat feature if a video goes viral or so, but Peertube still needs a lot of bandwidth regardless.
One requested feature has been to be able to seed while not watching a video. This could help out to further distribute the serving of videos.
IMO the main benefitof seeding while watching is any “viral” videos or videos being watched many times concurrently have a reduced load on the server.
How does that compare to BitTorrent?
Its similar technically (and an earlier version of Peertube used something called Webtorrent), but the usage pattern is completely different.
How does the usage pattern differ?
AFAIK, PeerTube still uses WebTorrent internally (could be wrong tho), and I wonder whether it could continue seeding back in the background after the tab has been closed, using some technology such as WebWorker or something.
No they switched to something else that is better but functionally similar.
I think people would really hate it if their browser would keep power-hungry and bandwidth heavy connections open for tabs they closed already.
Maybe it could be seeding on Desktop only?
I doubt many people would agree to that even on desktop PCs.
I think it would be better if there was a lightweight and easy to run headless relay that people could host themselves to help out struggling Peertube instances.
I could see them just having this as an option in a native client application. It could even let you pick and choose which instances, creators or videos you seed, perhaps even a “Seed This Video” button on the next video endscreen.
I think that less people would agree if it was a sort of “black box” of seeding, but I reckon a lot more people than you would think would go for it if they get to choose.
(Good) Pirates are already used to paying for their content with bandwidth and power usage ;)
Theres this old experimental tool called ZeroNet, and it had some really good ways of managing shared data. You could pin websites and files for other people to access, set limits, bandwidth, etc. It’d be nice to have something similar on peertube, like supporting certain creators by immediately hosting their videos for them. Maybe, for example, hosting their latest three videos.
BTW, you can use Sepia Search to search across all public PeerTube instances.
Thanks for this. I love Peertube but definitely find search to be something that holds it back from being more widely adopted.
@ProdigalFrog and I run a documentary channel on PeerTube in collaboration with Kolektiva.Media
Yea, it’s awesome, especially if local government helps set up distributed instances for their citizens https://freediverse.com/w/9ey947PwENGf9BnYTX1jkV
I want PeerTube to explode in popularity so badly. My experience has not been great, though. I haven’t found an instance that will reliably play back a video for me, yet. Bandwidth is a hard, hard problem.
I haven’t figured out what the “All” feed equivalent is for PeerTube. Finding content is extremely difficult.
If you go to “trending” or “recently added” it will say “scope : federated” near the top of the page. If you go to “local videos” it will only show local videos sorted by default by upload date. If you go to any of these pages and click “more filters” you can choose under “scope” whether it shows federated videos, whether to sort by popularity or upload date etc, which languages or categories to display, etc.
Still, it is difficult to find good content on PeerTube in my experience. Your best hope is probably using sepiasearch.org rather than the search feature of your own instance.
Are there any instances that you’d recommend? My current instance is shutting down. One day, I’ll set up my own.
A few that come to mind:
- Kolektiva.Media
- TILvids.com
- Urbanists.Video
