I remember back in 2017(?) there was a big day when it seemed like everyone stormed to Mastodon, and I honestly got really swept up in the excitement - there were all these small neat instances...
I remember back in 2017(?) there was a big day when it seemed like everyone stormed to Mastodon, and I honestly got really swept up in the excitement - there were all these small neat instances setting up of all different sizes with quirky names and rules that it took me days to settle on one.
I have my heart in PeerTube, and donated during the V3 crowdfunding. It feels difficult to dive in despite the team's best efforts to make it accessible - I'm concerned that perhaps unlike Mastodon the barrier for entry is far higher. I imagine a typical PeerTube instance requires far more resources than a typical Mastodon instance, and it takes much longer to create/edit a video than to toot.
Browsing the instance list it's hard to drive up a passion to call any of them a 'home'. Feels like there's a dozen 'this instance is for doug run by doug' or an instance with a promising description called something like 'Cool Tube' that has the URL lwvyd.jujuj.info (exaggeration).
My main mastodon account is on Mastodon.art - I like that when I say 'here's my mastodon' to someone unfamiliar with the service, the URL looks reliable and trustworthy.
I don't have the knowledge or resources to run a PeerTube instance, but would gladly pay toward one as I do for Mastodon. I wish I had the wear-with-all to rally together an instance for content creators that don't necessarily come from tech-backgrounds.
I think PeerTube has an uphill battle to face in this regard. There's a big overlap between people who are able to have interesting thoughts and are able to contribute to Mastodon. It seems those that who are are both 1. able and willing to put together a video and 2. able to willing to navigate PeerTubes instances, deliver a certain subset of interests/content.
Is it the great irony of the fediverse that most people gravitate toward one flagship instance, when the objective is to decentralize? I'm concerned that without one, PeerTube will struggle to grow past these niche corners.
Sorry for the whiny/self-entitled post. Power to those who are contributing and creating instances. PeerTube represents the core and soul of a better internet, and I yearn to see it succeed.
Not the person who you replied to, but thanks for the recommendation anyways. Last time I tried a bunch of peertube instances it was a nightmare, with videos only loading 1/2 the time (if that),...
Not the person who you replied to, but thanks for the recommendation anyways. Last time I tried a bunch of peertube instances it was a nightmare, with videos only loading 1/2 the time (if that), and insane buffering issues even when they did... but diode.zone seems to work great.
Federated systems let you turn a differentiated product like YouTube into a commodity. If you have one large major provider of a commodity instead of a product, you still get a lot of the...
Is it the great irony of the fediverse that most people gravitate toward one flagship instance, when the objective is to decentralize? I'm concerned that without one, PeerTube will struggle to grow past these niche corners.
Federated systems let you turn a differentiated product like YouTube into a commodity. If you have one large major provider of a commodity instead of a product, you still get a lot of the efficiencies of centralization, but anyone who wants to switch providers can, and therefore the large provider has much less power.
I think a major downside is in the user experience. One thing I like about YouTube is that I can just open the app on my Apple TV, and all the channels I subscribe to are right there complete with...
I think a major downside is in the user experience.
One thing I like about YouTube is that I can just open the app on my Apple TV, and all the channels I subscribe to are right there complete with a list of recent uploads, and recommendations for similar videos.
I almost never use the website anymore because this experience is really good, and available right in my living room.
PeerTube has no availability on most streaming TV devices, and the federated nature means that assembling a clean cohesive TV UX could prove difficult.
Software needs to be where the users are in order to see any serious adoption. By making no effort to be available on smart TV platforms, PeerTube is surrendering an enormous market to its...
Software needs to be where the users are in order to see any serious adoption.
By making no effort to be available on smart TV platforms, PeerTube is surrendering an enormous market to its established competitors.
We cannot expect to replace YouTube until we have something that is equally accessible and user friendly. As software engineers, we can't put the moral impetus on our users and expect it to work out. We have to provide something that they find immediately better than what they already have.
That is a totally fine position to hold. Not everything needs (or should want) to be the biggest. I was talking from the perspective of someone who thinks YouTube has too much power, and wants to...
That is a totally fine position to hold. Not everything needs (or should want) to be the biggest.
I was talking from the perspective of someone who thinks YouTube has too much power, and wants to see a true alternative show up and compete directly. So far, we have direct competitors that have made a nasty habit of catering to extremists, and less direct competitors that sacrifice user friendliness and discoverability in the name of promoting a non-centralized platform (i.e. Peertube).
What a lot of us want is just a YouTube without the uneven rule enforcement and broken Content ID system. True competition in this space would probably make YouTube better at these things.
While i don't have peertube experience (other than watching several videos passively), i do have fediverse experience from way back in the identi.ca and Gnu Social days...and one thing that i have...
Is it the great irony of the fediverse that most people gravitate toward one flagship instance, when the objective is to decentralize? I'm concerned that without one, PeerTube will struggle to grow past these niche corners.
While i don't have peertube experience (other than watching several videos passively), i do have fediverse experience from way back in the identi.ca and Gnu Social days...and one thing that i have observed that is essential for adoption is simpler software. Simpler software both from the admin perspective as well as from the user perspective. Over time, the simpler the software, the more people will set up their own thing, instead of crowding to one or a few instances. I feel over time as peertube keeps improving the experience - for administering and using their software - more people will further decentralize the media...just need more time to continue improving the software. (Yes, also beyond simpler software, there's a need for a person paying for hosting/hardware/infrastructure...but i felt that element was safe to assume.)
To be clear, it's the software for creating an alternative to centralized video platforms. You can't, for example, go to peertube.com and upload your videos. You can download the PeerTube software...
To be clear, it's the software for creating an alternative to centralized video platforms. You can't, for example, go to peertube.com and upload your videos. You can download the PeerTube software and put it on your own server or find an existing instance and join. I think the naming is unfortunate because it gives content creators the wrong impression.
If you go to joinpeertube.org, there is a button labeled "See the Instances List", but all of the pages related to this project are broken for me. The buttons on that page don't work, and in fact the page gets cut off right below those buttons. My browser thinks there are about 10 more screens worth of content, but shows nothing but the background color. The pages at the above framablog.org link do a similar thing. Not sure if it's something on my end, like ad and tracking blockers, or something on their end (perhaps due to being hugged to death?). Either way, I'd love to learn more about where I can upload my videos, but after a day of trying to figure it out, I'm giving up.
Thanks! I'll check it out. I'm using 1Blocker and AdBlock (no relation to AdBlockPlus) in Safari. Most other stuff works fine. Edit: Just checked out diode.zone. Lot's of cool looking synth stuff!...
Thanks! I'll check it out. I'm using 1Blocker and AdBlock (no relation to AdBlockPlus) in Safari. Most other stuff works fine.
Edit: Just checked out diode.zone. Lot's of cool looking synth stuff! Excellent! I am a little disappointed to see Hitler on their front page given the circumstances this week, even if it's just a dumb joke. But other than that, it looks really neat. Thank you for the link!
I remember back in 2017(?) there was a big day when it seemed like everyone stormed to Mastodon, and I honestly got really swept up in the excitement - there were all these small neat instances setting up of all different sizes with quirky names and rules that it took me days to settle on one.
I have my heart in PeerTube, and donated during the V3 crowdfunding. It feels difficult to dive in despite the team's best efforts to make it accessible - I'm concerned that perhaps unlike Mastodon the barrier for entry is far higher. I imagine a typical PeerTube instance requires far more resources than a typical Mastodon instance, and it takes much longer to create/edit a video than to toot.
Browsing the instance list it's hard to drive up a passion to call any of them a 'home'. Feels like there's a dozen 'this instance is for doug run by doug' or an instance with a promising description called something like 'Cool Tube' that has the URL lwvyd.jujuj.info (exaggeration).
My main mastodon account is on Mastodon.art - I like that when I say 'here's my mastodon' to someone unfamiliar with the service, the URL looks reliable and trustworthy.
I don't have the knowledge or resources to run a PeerTube instance, but would gladly pay toward one as I do for Mastodon. I wish I had the wear-with-all to rally together an instance for content creators that don't necessarily come from tech-backgrounds.
I think PeerTube has an uphill battle to face in this regard. There's a big overlap between people who are able to have interesting thoughts and are able to contribute to Mastodon. It seems those that who are are both 1. able and willing to put together a video and 2. able to willing to navigate PeerTubes instances, deliver a certain subset of interests/content.
Is it the great irony of the fediverse that most people gravitate toward one flagship instance, when the objective is to decentralize? I'm concerned that without one, PeerTube will struggle to grow past these niche corners.
Sorry for the whiny/self-entitled post. Power to those who are contributing and creating instances. PeerTube represents the core and soul of a better internet, and I yearn to see it succeed.
Not the person who you replied to, but thanks for the recommendation anyways. Last time I tried a bunch of peertube instances it was a nightmare, with videos only loading 1/2 the time (if that), and insane buffering issues even when they did... but diode.zone seems to work great.
Federated systems let you turn a differentiated product like YouTube into a commodity. If you have one large major provider of a commodity instead of a product, you still get a lot of the efficiencies of centralization, but anyone who wants to switch providers can, and therefore the large provider has much less power.
I think a major downside is in the user experience.
One thing I like about YouTube is that I can just open the app on my Apple TV, and all the channels I subscribe to are right there complete with a list of recent uploads, and recommendations for similar videos.
I almost never use the website anymore because this experience is really good, and available right in my living room.
PeerTube has no availability on most streaming TV devices, and the federated nature means that assembling a clean cohesive TV UX could prove difficult.
Pretty much anyone with a Mac can write an Apple TV app and submit it to the App Store, but nobody has bothered to.
Software needs to be where the users are in order to see any serious adoption.
By making no effort to be available on smart TV platforms, PeerTube is surrendering an enormous market to its established competitors.
We cannot expect to replace YouTube until we have something that is equally accessible and user friendly. As software engineers, we can't put the moral impetus on our users and expect it to work out. We have to provide something that they find immediately better than what they already have.
That is a totally fine position to hold. Not everything needs (or should want) to be the biggest.
I was talking from the perspective of someone who thinks YouTube has too much power, and wants to see a true alternative show up and compete directly. So far, we have direct competitors that have made a nasty habit of catering to extremists, and less direct competitors that sacrifice user friendliness and discoverability in the name of promoting a non-centralized platform (i.e. Peertube).
What a lot of us want is just a YouTube without the uneven rule enforcement and broken Content ID system. True competition in this space would probably make YouTube better at these things.
While i don't have peertube experience (other than watching several videos passively), i do have fediverse experience from way back in the identi.ca and Gnu Social days...and one thing that i have observed that is essential for adoption is simpler software. Simpler software both from the admin perspective as well as from the user perspective. Over time, the simpler the software, the more people will set up their own thing, instead of crowding to one or a few instances. I feel over time as peertube keeps improving the experience - for administering and using their software - more people will further decentralize the media...just need more time to continue improving the software. (Yes, also beyond simpler software, there's a need for a person paying for hosting/hardware/infrastructure...but i felt that element was safe to assume.)
PeerTube is an alternative to centralized video platforms like YouTube. HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25707059
To be clear, it's the software for creating an alternative to centralized video platforms. You can't, for example, go to peertube.com and upload your videos. You can download the PeerTube software and put it on your own server or find an existing instance and join. I think the naming is unfortunate because it gives content creators the wrong impression.
If you go to joinpeertube.org, there is a button labeled "See the Instances List", but all of the pages related to this project are broken for me. The buttons on that page don't work, and in fact the page gets cut off right below those buttons. My browser thinks there are about 10 more screens worth of content, but shows nothing but the background color. The pages at the above framablog.org link do a similar thing. Not sure if it's something on my end, like ad and tracking blockers, or something on their end (perhaps due to being hugged to death?). Either way, I'd love to learn more about where I can upload my videos, but after a day of trying to figure it out, I'm giving up.
Thanks! I'll check it out. I'm using 1Blocker and AdBlock (no relation to AdBlockPlus) in Safari. Most other stuff works fine.
Edit: Just checked out diode.zone. Lot's of cool looking synth stuff! Excellent! I am a little disappointed to see Hitler on their front page given the circumstances this week, even if it's just a dumb joke. But other than that, it looks really neat. Thank you for the link!