We all hate google and youtube, but overall as a community we’re all simultaneously lukewarm and non-committal about pushing towards using an alternative. I admittedly cling to invidious frontends for dear life.
It seems like whenever somebody asks for an alternative to youtube, they’re offered Odysee and Peertube, but inevitably many others chime in about the shortcomings of both of those platforms.
Can we as a community come to a consensus as to which of these platforms should be pushed forward?
I don’t even think it needs to be a binary choice. Obviously youtube cannot be immediately replaced for it’s archival of educational and tutorial videos, but we can at least push newcomers towards using invidious frontends for those instances.
Maybe Odysee is better for some type of content over Peertube. Let’s discuss which platform works best for what and try to be more active about sharing and promoting them not just to viewers but potential creators as well.
If you go to share a youtube link, try to see if that video exists on an alternate platform first and share that link instead. I think that’s a good first step towards getting away from youtube in the privacy community.
But youtube alternatives are still very much on the fringe and I’m hoping this post will at least inspire some discussion about changing that.
Nebula might be worth the $5/month. The platform is run by the creators, so that money goes to them. DM me if you’re interested. I can gift you a free week.
Nebula is great. Lots of original content, varied catalog and you get to see lots of stuff before it comes out on YouTube (if it even does, as there’s also extended Nebula-only videos)
Nebula is great.
It’s pretty funny to watch a quick “check out our extended content on Nebula” video exit, then just immediately watch the extended content roll along with a thank you message. (Many creators simply add the Nebula exclusive bits directly to the end of the video, on Nebula.)
It makes me feel like a fancy rich person.
“Thanks for watching on Nebula” 😎
I support and enjoy Nebula. Definitely worth the cost in my opinion.
I’ve really enjoyed nebula, would reccomend.
BET live streaming still has 3+ minute commercial breaks, so i’m waiting for youtube to do the equivalent.
The last I heard Youtube actually makes a loss in terms of cost and ad revenue but is worth maintaining because of the user data it makes available to its parent company. The low ethical standards and backing of one of the worlds biggest corporations allow it to outcompete any alternative.
If we’re serious about dealing with the problem we need to deal with antitrust and privacy.
I doubt they will do it but video creators need to organise and put pressure on government to enforce the law on this.
YouTube has been profitable since 2019
Well, would it work if we get a few 1$ a month VPS and run mediacms on them ? each one could probably house a couple hundred videos and they have about the capacity to serve, maybe 100 users on gigabit internet with 4TB a month traffic allowance. That’s still a lot of serving video for not a lot of money.
The problem is that there are no good solutions hosting and serving video with transcoding g is expensive. They do the best they can, but its not enough. This is where tech giants thrive, in the really expensive stuff that gets cheaper thanks to the economy of scale (is that the term? I forgot). Those are the big strongholds of YouTube, twitch, AI,
We need to split clients from providers.
Invidious and freetube could diversify to accept multiple alternative sources besides youtube content.
If the content exists on multiple platforms the user could set a preference and orded or backup providers.
As creators make a switch to smaller platforms the users who use these clients are unaffected. It works similar to our fediverse, a community can just change instance and everyone can still access it the same.
Creators could test migration by posting to multiple providers themselves. Those reliant on YouTube money specifically could premiere on youtube and after some time reupload elsewhere.
Those that dont rely on youtube money can do the reverse where the later youtube upload serves more as an ad to their alternative main channel.
Doesn’t Grayjay from Futo do this?
I’ve not used it yet, but to my understanding this is exactly what it does, or very damn close to it.
This is actually a brilliant idea.
Grayjay is built on this idea
That immediately came to mind. But is there a way to have it reroute to a different platform if the video is on an alternative platform? I follow a few youtubers in grayjay that I only recently discovered mirror on peer tube. Grayjay didn’t give any hints.
I have no idea, to be honest
I’m not coming at this from a privacy perspective but I have gone through the alternatives to see what (if any) I can practically use because I want to extricate American tech from my life.
There are three categories (ignoring a tonne for obvious reasons):
- Region Specific:
- Bilibili (China)
- Niconico (Japan)
- etc.
- Alt-tech:
- Odysee (US/Decentralized)
- Peertube (France/Decentralized)
- Rumble (Canada but close Trump affiliation)
- Bit Chute (UK)
- Standard:
- Nebula (US)
- Daily Motion (France)
- TikTok (China)
I use Nebula, have briefly tried Tiktok, Peertube, Daily Motion, Niconico, and Bilibili. Perhaps I should consider the alt-tech platforms too but there’s nobody on them and their reputations have been damaged by the far-right flocking to them when banned from YouTube for quite justifiable reasons. All platforms seem to have the issue that basically nobody of note uploads to more than one platform.
The best time to switch away from youtube was several years back, after the growth phase of our few remaining tech players ended and maximizing revenue started.
The next best time is now. They will only get worse, and bow to powerful interests even more. Them demanding we prove age by providing commercially valuable info they will keep no matter what they say, should be the last straw for all of us.
Find smaller competitors, youtube and google are lost causes we need to quit both.
I like the idea of PeerTube, but I tried running an instance and was unable to sustain the experiment for too long. I made it very open and it got quickly flooded by pirated TV series and spammy and heavy content.
After that, I had a difficult time at some point finding an instance to host some videos I wanted to upload - and, having had that failed experiment before hand, I can see why the instances that do survive are often those with more stringent filters and less generous with resources.
So, I am sorry to “chime in about the shortcomings”, but hosting a PeerTube instance can be a demotivating experience. You set up the infrastructure expecting to contribute to a space reminiscent of the old youtube, and you see it filled with spam. The signal-to-noise ratio is just awful and it is expensive. To avoid this, you can be an aggressive gate keeper - but this makes the platform less friendly to people who are looking to find a space to share their original content. Gate keeping is also an additional effort that you need to make. In the end I chose to just shut it off as it was more of a hassle than fun. By comparison, hosting a Lemmy instance is fun, much much cheaper, and little hassle.
I still haven’t given up on the idea of Peertube, though… I have some video ideas, and when I finally get to making them I plan to make another instance to host only my channel. Then, I would be able to host my own channel using my own infrastructure via a federated network. This use case would work very well for me, and it can probably work for many others. So that is one way of building the Peertube network.
General permissive video uploads is something that makes YouTube such a powerful platform though, and that is very difficult to replicate.
You pretty much summed up the problems with Peertube and why I feel it’s the weakest amongst the fediverse platforms. it is SO hard to find a decent instance unlike Mastodon, Piefed, lemmy, etc. And some of the decent Peertube instances you wouldn’t even know are Peertube with the way they’re branded.
I mean I still can’t find a good peertube instance. I’ve considered setting up my own much like I have my own Akkoma/Mastodon instance but I don’t want to bog down my server with it. And I think that might be the root of the problem overall for Peertube.
It’s very difficult to get away from YT, too long time with free hands converted it to a monoply with all its abuses. Yes, there are alternatives like Odysee, PeerTube and some others, but they lack of contents, front ends, like Invidious, PokeTube, etc are getting killed more and more by Gargle. For music there isn’t such a big problem, most content can be listen in Bandcamp and other streaming sites, but for other contents only can be found, eg. in the homepages of the Public TV (Movies, Live streams, Documentals,…). Another possibility are Desktop clients, but eg. FreeTube relays on Invidious and with this most Videos are blocked, VLC or SMplayer still working mostly. It’s certainly a Mess and it will take years to be able to substitute really YT. Only manner until now is to use protection against the profiling and tracking (VPN, Proxies, ad/tracker blocker anyway mandatory, etc).
Nebula is pretty great.
very much on the fringe
When mainstream is mostly consumerist attention grabbing bullshit, is it genuinely a problem?
Nothing can compare yet to YouTube.
The main reason is: YouTube is not only a distribution channel. It is also its own promotion channel tied to a search engine which magnifies that promotion.
You open YouTube and it offers similar videos tho what you’ve been watching. You search for something and there is probably a video (or many( matching what you are searching.
Other platforms are currently only distribution channels. You upload the video and promote it through other channels. Whether your own website or posts somewhere else.
Si, if you are a content producer and want to share, the current fediverse solutions are great, however it will need critical mass to attract content consumers.
And without content consumers, it will be hard to attract content providers who want a broad distribution and exposure.
So, let’s start moving out own content to the fediverse and use other channels to promote them. Let’s create a snowball effect. We could even post to several and see where the content consumers gravitate to.
however it will need critical mass to attract content consumers.
My guess is that that’s the reason why OP wants to focus on one platform. Pick a winner and bring the traffic.
Yesterday, but today is good as well. :-)
I personally run two. My own at video.firesidefedi.live.
And started a nonprofit that I’m still working on getting 501© 3 status in the US called BT Free, and currently running a moderated instance TubeFree.org. open for sign ups, but if you want to post video I need to see it first as again, heavily moderated. Eventually I plan on having storage costs for tax deductible donations, but idk when that’ll be. And hopefully in the future can do revenue sharing or have a way to post creators.
I know Ben Pate, whom I talked with on fireside fedi and is creating emissary and bandwagon, is working on pay systems. As well as other folks.
I still watch YouTube but I block all their ads.
