Hi, my post is focusing specifically on YouTube since I observed the following categories have less intrusive solutions or privacy focused solutions, even if they are paid:

  • Operating Systems (Linux, for example)
  • Instant Messaging (Element, for example)
  • Community Messaging (Revolt, for example)
  • E-Mail (Proton, for example)
  • Office (libreoffice, for example)
  • Password Managers (Bitwarden, for example)

However, how do we distribute videos and watch them without data collection? I am NOT asking how do I use a privacy-focused front-end for YouTube, by the way, I am aware they exist.

I am wondering how we obtain a FOSS solution to something super critical such as YouTube. It is critical since it contains a lot of educational content (I’d wager more than any other platform), and arguably the most informative platform, despite having to filter through a lot of trash. During COVID, we even saw lecturers from universities upload their content on YouTube and telling students to watch those lectures. (I have first-hand experience with this at a respectable university).

I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do about it.

  •  banazir   ( @banazir@lemmy.ml ) 
    97•9 months ago

    I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do about it.

    I don’t think you quite understand just how stupendous the amount of data Google processes from YouTube alone is. There is basically no way for hobbyists to provide an equivalent service. Very few companies have those kinds of resources. If you want, you can of course try running a PeerTube instance, but you rather quickly run in to problems with scaling.

    I find it almost miraculous YouTube exists to begin with. It is no accident Google has very few competitors on that front, and I don’t think YouTube is even profitable for them. Without Google’s deep pockets and interest in monopolizing the market, YouTube would have withered a long time ago.

    Trust me, I want a solution too. But 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. All of that is processed, re-encoded, and saved with multiple bitrates. You can’t compete with that. YouTube might eventually keel over from Enshittification and its own impossibility, but replacing it with anything meaningful will be a challenge.

    •  alvvayson   ( @alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
      13•9 months ago

      While I do agree with you, I also see twitch, TikTok and Patreon presenting models that are quite competitive with YouTube.

      From a privacy perspective, free junk content like TikTok, YouTube and twitch will always be hard coupled with targeted advertising.

      But Patreon (and onlyfans for that matter) do offer a model that can work without ads.

      In fact, if Patreon also introduced an ad-supported tier and allowed you to more broadly see other content aside from the direct person you sponsor, it could probably grow quite a lot.

      •  huginn   ( @huginn@feddit.it ) 
        8•9 months ago

        1. Tiktok is a company comparable in scale to Google. 130Bn in revenue last year.

        2. Patreon is nowhere near the scale of YouTube. But I also think it’s the only viable solution to privacy and supporting creators.

    •  people_are_cute   ( @people_are_cute@lemmy.sdf.org ) 
      9•9 months ago

      I’d have agreed but hundreds of fmovies and similar sites exist on the high seas that provide free streaming of millions of HD content (movies, web series, etc.) somehow. They use some third-party video host that is magically able to concurrently serve millions of people.

      •  Em Adespoton   ( @adespoton@lemmy.ca ) 
        1•9 months ago

        Maybe the solution to YouTube is something similar to BitTorrent. It would make more sense for the protocol to preload the first chunk and to use a codec that can start with a lower res image and then fill in the resolution in subsequent passes. And on the front end, something like Lemmy would work, where channels and posts can be federated.

        Considering the number of people who have 1gps symmetric bandwidth today, such a system should be able to technically work.

        But nobody’s designed it yet AFAIK.

    •  Dessalines   ( @dessalines@lemmy.ml ) 
      8•9 months ago

      Counter-point : every single one of the videos uploaded to youtube already lives on the creators hard drive, usually in a much larger format. All that’s needed is for them to create torrents for them.

      •  mrpants   ( @mrpants@midwest.social ) English
        5•9 months ago

        I think the largest challenge though is maintaining the distribution and managing the associated upfront costs.

        Existing large content producers could likely afford to handle this but new producers could struggle paying to seed their content.

        Though I do think overall this is more achievable than people give it credit for:

        • YT videos don’t need huge bandwidth for a sustained period; only for short bursts. Most views come in within a week.
        • Content is probably localized to specific countries. Less need to replicate across the globe.
        • Let the source prefer to seed the highest quality and other peers downsample and replicate as needed.
        • Doesn’t need YT scale. Tons of YT “content” is spammers leeching essentially free hosting from YT. No one needs to seed their videos if they don’t want to.
        • 1080p is still fine for YT videos. h265 is very efficient (though downsampling 265 isn’t great). Don’t need 4k for most videos.
  •  bluGill   ( @bluGill@kbin.run ) 
    66•9 months ago

    Peertube exists. Use it.

    now I will admit that peertube is lacking content, but when you make something put it there. When you want something search there first and check out youtube last. This rewards those who publish there with your eyeballs

  •  TheImpressiveX   ( @TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml ) 
    26•9 months ago

    I’m not sure if you can replace YouTube. It’s too popular and has been a mainstay of the Internet for 19 years. We won’t be able to convince people to just up and leave YouTube.

    Best case scenario is to lead by example and start sharing videos from PeerTube.

  •  🦊 OneRedFox 🦊   ( @OneRedFox@beehaw.org ) English
    21•9 months ago

    Video hosting/streaming is the hardest use-case to replace due to infrastructure costs. PeerTube exists, which works like torrents and is probably the best solution that we’re gonna get for this. I don’t see it replacing YouTube though, since decentralization fundamentally limits reach (and potential income as a result) and a lack of data collection makes it harder to accurately profile viewers (both of which professional content creators care about). It’s probably fine for hobbyists and FOSS projects that want to distribute videos though.

  •  Snot Flickerman   ( @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
    15•9 months ago

    Honestly the biggest thing all of us is missing to take it down is financial capital.

    To get the kind of capital you need to take down YouTube, you need investment money from the kind of investors who will force you to enshittify to afford paying them back.

    The financial issue is the biggest one, when it comes to any and all of these.

  •  biddy   ( @biddy@feddit.nl ) 
    14•9 months ago

    I’m not as optimistic as you.

    Hosting video is really expensive. Making video is really expensive. YouTube was losing money for about 15 years despite having a monopoly on online video for most of that time and the best advertising tech in the world. I don’t think it’s possible to make a free competitor to YouTube.

    On the paid side, there’s plenty of streaming services that are making money. But you have to be already established in order to get a contract. And since you will typically have to use social media in order to get past that initial barrier, it might as well include YouTube.

    However, my guess is that YouTube makes the majority of it’s money from larger channels. If the larger channels all join paid streaming services(e.g. Nebula) then gradually that may be able to bring YouTube down.

  •  DavidGarcia   ( @DavidGarcia@feddit.nl ) 
    12•9 months ago

    The technology mostly exists. The most important question is always how do you get people to use it.

    The only way I see people using decentralized solutions is by having one interface where you can watch decentralized content as well as YouTube. That way they don’t loose any of the content or convenience.

    No one ever bothers to open up two apps for videos, that is why a single app solution is the only way.

    The unique selling point of decentralized video plattforms atm is 1) you can watch what is banned on YouTube 2) you are not beholden to the YouTube algorithm for conent.

    So if we can sell that to users and not have them loose any convenience or UX, you can slowly start replacing YouTube.

    Monetization is also an important point, but others have addressed this.

  •  _MusicJunkie   ( @_MusicJunkie@beehaw.org ) 
    10•9 months ago

    Money. Lots and lots of it.

    Hosting video on a significant scale is very expensive. Stupendously expensive.

    Convincing people to join is also going to cost a lot of money. Consumers are on YT because creators are there, and they are already used to the platform. Creators are there because the consumers are there. And there is a robust infrastructure to make a living from content creation.

    Financing is especially difficult for such a project, because companies are willing to pay way more for targeted ads. For which you need some data about your users. The more data you collect, the better the and targeting can be, the more companies are willing to pay.
    Assuming there are enough users for companies to pay for advertising at all.

  •  Wistful   ( @Wistful@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
    10•9 months ago

    I was just reading this issue on Github last night and I really don’t see how PeerTube is any better than a traditional server for hosting videos. The peer part of it seems to have such a miniscule impact on the whole thing that it just feels like a gimmick. I’ve read that the biggest problem for PeerTube instance hosts is storage and not the bandwidth. The only thing that peers can save you is tiny bit of bandwidth from what I understand.

    So from what I’ve gathered, relying on peers only for hosting the video is completely unviable. And that makes sense, especially for old, unpopular videos, there will be no peers to begin with. Even if every video on the site is being “seeded” by viewers, the reliability of connection and bandwidth would be very bad because you can’t know if the peer is some guy on the dial up connection. Even in the perfect scenario where everyone had very reliable connection and good bandwidth, the fact that browsers don’t support p2p protocol and rely on a hack/workaround to use it, will mean that there will be delays. So starting the video and rewinding would be painfully slow.

    Is there something that I’m missing, or is PeerTube really not that much better than a “normal” video hosting server?

    •  Dessalines   ( @dessalines@lemmy.ml ) 
      2•9 months ago

      Peertube uses webtorrents, not regular torrents, and doesn’t even hook into the larger torrent network, which is seeding most of media on the net.

      You’re correc, the peer part of peertube is mainly a gimmick at this point, and it’s nowhere close to being what torrents already are, a decentralized hosting network.

  •  magic_lobster_party   ( @magic_lobster_party@kbin.run ) 
    9•9 months ago

    Easy solution: host an FTP with all the videos. It has existed long before YouTube was a thing.

    More advanced solution: Torrent ala Pirate Bay. High quality videos have been distributed this way long before YouTube even supported 1080p. Peertube is based on similar solution as this.

    The main problem is to attract content creators to the platform. The problem isn’t technical.

  •  wuphysics87   ( @wuphysics87@lemmy.ml ) 
    9•9 months ago

    As nice as an idea as it is, it will never be feesible for one reason: buy in. You would have to get everyone on youtube to migrate to the same platform. Just about everyone who uses windows has gripes about it, but the masses don’t migrate to Linux. Because it is change at all, and there are too many choices. I like anyone else here, would love for folks to even consider an alternative, it’s a losing battle against human nature.

    •  bazmatazable   ( @bazmatazable@reddthat.com ) 
      2•9 months ago

      Network Effect is the biggest hurdle for sure. I think it it true for so many other services too. I think we can agree there is no real technical problem to solve, we only look at the technical problems because trying to “fix” the social and political issues is a lot harder. Digital Markets Act is supposed to address this but time will tell if it has any lasting impact (in the EU).

  •  bizarroland   ( @bizarroland@fedia.io ) 
    7•9 months ago

    The biggest issue I’ve always heard people say when it comes to replacing a video hosting service like YouTube is needing storage space and bandwidth.

    I feel like ipfs, the interplanetary file system, could be leveraged to do this but it would require a concerted effort to make a fast, stable, reliable, and federated YouTube replacement, and I imagine that we would need people to financially support it.