By building tools that prioritize openness and decentralization, they show that there could be real alternatives to the dominant platforms. Even if most people never leave YouTube, the simple fact that PeerTube and similar projects exist keeps alive the idea that the web doesn’t have to be controlled by a handful of corporations.
They need help in their journey - support them :) [0]
Same here, the minimum would have been to add Peertube in the title.
It's extremely hard to move users accustomed to "free" advertisement-fueled services to the micro-payment model. Content creators actively try to increase revenue by using things like Patreon and membership-only videos, but YouTube ads is still the dominant source for most.
And properly paying for the underlying infrastructure is even more difficult. Filecoin tries to do it, but it's hard to call it a succesfull project.
Personally, I feel we're slowly moving beyond the mindset that one tool or service needs to "rule them all". I was recently very pleased to discover several online events I took part in were powered by PeerTube, and it just worked.
If an organization is looking to host a stream or offer virtual attendance of sorts, it feels like a no-brainer to pick something like PeerTube and avoid the data/algorithm behemoths.
Do your own research if you want to know more.
Thank you for the link.
Debian: https://peertube.debian.social/
Blender: https://video.blender.org/
Extinction Rebellion: https://tube.rebellion.global/
Discovery is still absolutely ass even if you're using it right though
IMO This is like people complaining that multiple Linux distros exist.
The issue is monopolies.
Network effects are also somehow not working very well for decentralised things, possibly because everyone wants to fork Product X but no one wants to improve it for added discoverability or less bugs.
for example Substack is a good upgrade to social media. It's centralized, but people have to pay their favorite writers. They do this to avoid bs, ads, being a product. The important part of Substack is that if the platform screw the authors over, they have control over their email lists (unlike social media), and they can just move somewhere else.
So a platform like Substack is a move in the right direction vs. something like Twitter.
SilverElfin•4mo ago
realityfactchex•4mo ago
It's more like, if you find a maker of content that you like, they might happen to have a PeerTube or other independent YouTube-like site up as well, as a backup or larger archive of their material.
The independently hosted FOSS alternatives are more for people who create content and don't want to or can't depend on the good graces of bigtech to indefinitely host their content for whatever reason (usually a practical matter, sometimes even underlying political factors).
For instance, YouTube will scan new content automatically and zap the channel if it says the wrong couple words more than a few times.
Maybe that's not a problem for a lot of channels. But there were definitely tons of creators who got burned by that kind of cancelling over the last n years.
So I imagine, yes, some entrepreneurial, technical, and communication-oriented folks would be interested in things like PeerTube, YouPHPTube (which is actually quite good) [1], etc.
[1] https://youphp.tube
bruffen•4mo ago
dudefeliciano•4mo ago
bruffen•4mo ago
It's not a big deal.
trinsic2•4mo ago
dudefeliciano•4mo ago
Also to think that it's the phrase "consume content" making us mindless consumer seems way off to me. What would you call most of the videos on youtube/tiktok/instagram? Art, Documentaries, Didactic aid? Perhaps "content" is the best way to refer to them.
bediger4000•4mo ago
bediger4000•4mo ago
It's an MBA's way of denigrating everything not presentable in a PowerPoint.
SilverElfin•4mo ago
This type of censorship is why I think decentralized video is important. But if it isn’t accessible to everyday people there will be low views and it hurts the availability of censored content.
portaouflop•4mo ago
vintermann•4mo ago
balamatom•4mo ago
i've had good experiences with discovery on decentralized platforms. it's proceeded by means totally unlike advertisement, hmm, i wonder if anyone remembers what those were?
what i find funnier is how the platforms that have actual content hate crypto, and the platforms that have crypto ... i'm not sure if they even remember what "content" was. that ain't a way to starve youtubers, it's the exact opposite. shame.
jbm•4mo ago
As a result, I wind up wasting hours and I simply do not have that time.
vintermann•4mo ago
Or to take it from the other perspective, if you make videos on Peertube you need to give people some way different than doomscrolling/built in search to find your stuff.
trinsic2•4mo ago
balamatom•4mo ago
vintermann•4mo ago
balamatom•4mo ago
i don't think you can do much doomscrolling on peertube, either. but then, that's probably a non-goal for their project. instead i think i'll go look if there's a 3rd party frontend for that now, blessings :-)
trilogic•4mo ago
est•4mo ago
It's about authorship, not the tool.
I hope non-profit and academia would embrace peertube.
vintermann•4mo ago
balder1991•4mo ago
izacus•4mo ago
And this is where Peertube isn't really the same kind of a platform so you won't see the same kind of videos.