Is PeerTube dead or is discoverability bad?

[notfromhere@lemmy.ml]

Is it because video hosting is substantially more expensive than mostly text and some images (Lemmy and Mastodon) that it brings out that kind of behavior? As in they have more skin in the game so they try to protect it more? Any thoughts on the new Loops platform? Is it suffering from the same issues?

[supersleuth@lemm.ee]

Most established hosters would be fearful to run an instance of peertube. Costs could balloon out of nowhere and would only increase with time. There is no way donations would keep up with costs, and charging to watch or a subscription would never take off.

[captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works]

Video hosting being expensive is why it's difficult for an individual to make an account on most if any instances, which is also a problem.

There are two "that kind of behaviors" here; the button to make content searchable across peertube is off by default for some reason and some admins aren't clicking it. That could be for myriad reasons. TILvids trying to build a walled garden in an open platform is just outright wrongheadedness.

I like the idea of themed instances that revolve around certain broad topics, kind of the way television channels used to do. Some of us are old enough to remember when there was science fiction on the Sci-Fi channel, music videos on MTV, documentaries on the Discovery Channel and so on. TILvids is trying to be the Discovery channel, except anyone who signs up for cable TV primarily for the Discovery channel doesn't get to see other channels, and anyone who signed up mostly for something else doesn't get to see the Discovery channel. The owner has talked about a "hub and spoke" model they want to build with TILvids as the hub, which is an incompatible vision with the success of PeerTube as a whole.

I'll also mention that I've never seen the "upload" gauge on Peertube do anything. The idea is it works like bittorrent, those who are watching a video will seed it to others to help share the load. I've yet to see that actually happen, and I wonder if it's because no one else in the world was watching that video at that moment.

I don't know much about Loops; it may be too early to ask. I haven't really looked at it yet, in no small part because you have to sign up for it, you can't really window shop. I think Loops is going to face the same problem that Minetest (or whatever they changed its name to) does; it's a good piece of software that does the things you like, and it's not attached to the corporate fuckheads who burned your future down. Want to try it out? "Absolutely, 100% no I don't because it's not the program my friends have." The fact that the Tiktok ban in America turned out to be fake is probably what's going to fail to launch Loops.

[ulrich@feddit.org]

The thing is, there may be content that people will find on Sepia search that you DO NOT want on your instance.

[tedde@lemmy.world]

Seems difficult to build it as a social media if it's inherently unsocial.

[meldrik@lemmy.wtf]

P2P on videos does work and if you watch out for a live stream, you’ll probably see it yourself.

Yesterday I was watching a live stream, where I had 10 peers.

[captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works]

Again I've yet to see it happen on a normal video, which leads me to believe there's extremely little traffic.

[meldrik@lemmy.wtf]

You can usually experience it if you watch some of newly added videos from the big channels.

[captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works]

Do we need to start over? Like fork PeerTube and fix all the "We choose to do this wrong because our parents didn't hug us as children" problems?

[schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business]

Ah cool. I never noticed that option, but that certainly improves things.

That should probably either be default or a thing asked on setup since I'd wager most people probably actually do want that.

[kichae@lemmy.ca]

It's not unsocial. It's just not mirroring multi-gigabyte files by default. It's perfectly social if you use the website.

Everyone has to stop conflating the technology with the network. Lemmy is a website engine. PeerTube is a website engine. The ability to mirror content is not inherent to running a Lemmy- or PeerTube-based website. The network is not the primary object here.

It is a construct that arrises from content-mirroring.

Remember, federation is copying, not creating some kind of remote view. If you're federating videos, you're letting other websites consume terabytes of your storage space amd bandwidth.

[commander@lemmings.world]

No, I don't think it's anywhere near that bad.

I just think that going forward, Peertube developers and instance owners should make the platform more accessible and interconnected.

It's a bigger responsibility to actually host content instead of just links to content, which I don't think most peertube instance owners can handle.

[commander@lemmings.world]

Remember, federation is copying, not creating some kind of remote view.

Is this true? It's my understanding that, lemmy for example, has the protocol in place for servers to communicate their content with each other, but each server's content is hosted separately.

Are you saying all federated services copy each other's data instead of only linking to it?

[lost_my_mind@lemmy.world]

If you mean hosted on your instance, that you own, can you not delete content?

If you mean you join an instance, and it has this content on it, well then you picked the wrong instance.

[ludrol@szmer.info]

Images* are linked, text is copied

See: https://szmer.info/post/5936505 https://lemmy.world/post/25244041

*thumbnails are also copied

[meldrik@lemmy.wtf]

Remember, federation is *copying*, not creating some kind of remote view. If you're federating videos, you're letting other websites consume terabytes of your storage space amd bandwidth.

That is not true, at all.

[meldrik@lemmy.wtf]

Check out the pinned posts here: [email protected] for info on instances that fits your needs.

You can mouse over the blurred title and see what it is.

[ulrich@feddit.org]

If you mean hosted on your instance, that you own, can you not delete content?

You can. At which point it would be unsearchable.

If you mean you join an instance, and it has this content on it, well then you picked the wrong instance.

You're thinking of this as a viewer and not a host.

[captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works]

I see two possible ways for it to succeed:

• Federate by default, defederate if you have to. This is how Lemmy mostly seems to work; I proposed a policy for defederation for sh.itjust.works that has been used, we will federate with you unless you start spamming or hosting illegal porn or spewing hate speech or that kind of shit, then we'll defederate. That has to happen at the instance level; if example.lol is generally fine but there's one account there that's a nuisance that's what the block button is for, but lolita.rape gets defederated (and reported to the FBI).

• Apply and join model. Have a coalition of instances that agree to mutually uphold certain moderation practices (no hate speech, no kid fucking, goat or human, no human trafficking, etc) and then they federate with each other, eventually forming a large and wholesome community.

Nobody federates and it's a bunch of independent nothings won't work. Youtubers will use it as a backup service, a couple of the real paranoid Linux types will host their videos there that someone might even watch, and half the instances will be places you go when you've been kicked off of Youtube.

[captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works]

Would that mean you need an account name to be Die4Ever and your channel identifier might be Die4Ever_Games?

That would actually solve a problem I had on Youtube, where, I'll use Linus Media Group as an example, Tech Linked and Mac Address were different unrelated Youtube channels. Youtube has no concept of "Shows"