Of course i’m not saying internet users have to use it. Or that it has to completely replace Youtube or other streaming services in its complete entirety.
Here is why internet users should start using Peertube, no matter how much or less they use it than Youtube. Simply letting them know it exists is key.
Peertube is essentially an interface with a varying amount of instances hosted by volunteers that all build up the bigger Peertube federated service with all the videos. Unlike alternatives this makes it more likely to be around long term.
it has the highest chance of other video user generated content services being around for years to come due to being federated. If Youtube shuts down good bye to alot of that years worth of content. If a peertube instance closes down only a smaller portion of videos would be lost, but that doesn’t close down the entire program because all the other instances in theory would still be feferated.
It’s open source meaning less chance of seeing ads on or by videos when not using an ad blocker. Donations are always encouraged to help fund the servers. But not required.
Summary:
-
longer lasting due to being federated even while making less profits.
-
Peertube is open source.
-
Donations are welcome but not required just to use the services usually.
Not a perfect solution either…
Say a popular content creator hosts and posts his content on their own instance, decides it’s not financially viable anymore for the burden it creates amd shuts it down.
No way to back it up except for disallowed downloads (assuming he requested it in his comments).
Also who moderates CP, reposts and spam? Good luck indie hosters if they open up to the general public instead of trusted uploaders.
Whitelisting releases is not a viable solution at scale.
Since I am not a user of peertube, how is transcoding solved? I suppose it happens client-side since it would destroy bandwidth and compute from the hoster but that would destroythe battery from mobile users?
From what I understand, there is an option to run transcoding servers standalone. So a single gen 5 pcie motherboard could run two alveo ma35d encoder cards and plow through a ton of encodes simultaneously. It wouldn’t be cheap of course, but in terms of running a media server hosting video, it is not impossible. This is the kind of thing in which groups of people working together would be more financially viable than separate.
Interesting and neat to know.
Both solutions (monolithic and federated) have their pro and cons.
Feel like the ownership vs money aspect is the biggest deciding factor.
(and backups)
If one server goes down youl have to switch to another but peertube will continue to work. That’s the advantage.