this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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YouTube might be the biggest challenge yet given the extraordinary amount of storage needed to recreate it.
Its also getting the content creators onto the new platform. Thats a bigger challenge I think, without creators it's a dead site really, and making videos is significantly more difficult than image or text posting.
For storage, if we assume the format would be WebM at 1080p, 60fps and 20 minutes in length, it turns out to about 1GB. Even a cheap VPS instance usually offer 50GB of storage (with not too expensive storage upgrades).
So if its distributed evenly, we can host a good bit of videos (nothing compared to YouTube though).
Its nearly impossible to replicate what YouTube it is today. The amount of storage and bandwith require is immense, also the creators coming up to a new platform without a way to get money it will really hard to have something like YouTube.
Why would we want to? People want to replace Youtube because Youtube sucks ass. Replacing it with another monetized platform will only ever lead to the same place Youtube is at now.
It sucks that people who managed to make a living from their hobby have gotten fucked over, but until we have some major regulatory and economic overhauls, that's just how it works. Changing platforms is not a solution to that.
Because what's the point otherwise. Let's just make a YouTube without videos. That will surely work.
Let's not forget that there's money to be earned by being a youtube person. Creating a model that would make this possible in a federated approach would be bonkers as hell and probably just invite predatory dipshits who then lure creators with seemingly good offers and then start to hold them hostage in ways YouTube hasn't dared so far.
Like Smosh?
Young up and coomers, first giants on YouTube. Sold their channel and brand for stock. Then were tied to the company for years who worked them like dogs. Until the company that bought them went bankrupt so their stock was nullified and they in the end sold their company for $0.
I wouldn't say YouTube was free from it
I don't think that word means what you think it means
It was intentional
Most professional YouTubers survive primarily off of Patreon support and sponsored videos. YouTube ads provide only a small fraction of what they earn. If they could increase their Patreon or sponsorship income by cross-posting to PeerTube, then they could be enticed to do so. The current issue there is that sponsors are going to want accurate analytics, and PeerTube isn't going to be able to offer the kind of depth of audience analysis that YouTube can.
The problem is, the cost of hosting videos -- both in terms of storage and in terms of bandwidth -- is kind of prohibitive. That part needs to be solved.
Ad reads and patreon
The reality is that most content creators will not switch platforms because it guarantees a significant loss of viewership. Ad reads won't pay much if you're only talking to a fraction of your audience.
good. i don't want capitalist advertising bs on the internet anyway.
While I agree in spirit, what other option is there in a capitalist society? Paying a subscription fee for every single service or every single content creator? Not sure people are going to go for that en masse.
I read 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Obviously a lot of that is low quality, but we're still talking a lot of content unless we're suggesting the creators host it themselves (which could work for a small subset of folks if it were enough of a turnkey solution).
Correct me if I’m wrong but I would guess that the majority of YouTube videos are at 30fps, right? I only want 60fps for gaming/sports clips
Yeah the majority are 30 I think
Convincing content creators to upload their videos to multiple platforms will be easy, as will uploading their old work
You just end up with a chicken and egg situation with viewers and creators.
The fediverse doesn't make money and it shouldn't. YouTube is fine unless some other business makes a decent competitor.
Yeah I think most people thinking we can just replace YouTube do not understand the scale of their operation. What YouTube does is many many orders of magnitude bigger and more complex than anything happening on the fediverse. PeerTube is a joke by comparison. There is a reason that even when VC money was flowing like crazy, nobody was able to even think about launching a competitor.
On top of that, no platform can seek to replace YouTube without offering the same or better creator compensation. Free services will never meet that.
Someone needs to invent middle-out compression and install it on a network of smart fridges
Couldn't get past the third season of that show. Got too repetitive. Is it worth finishing?
Not sure, I have almost finished S05 and still find it hilarious. Have to watch more to form a final opinion
Not worth watching past season 4, imo. Season 2 is the peak season, if you ask me.
Every season just felt like a repeat of season 1 IMO.
What show?
Silicon Valley
Yeah, this is the one I don't see happening.
Look at Twitch. Microsoft, Facebook, and (somewhat) Google have attempted to dethrone them and they've all failed. Things like Rumble and Kick are still going, and Kick may have a slight chance.
But that's a much smaller platform, that everyone agrees is absolute garbage and trying to kill itself at every turn. YouTube would be a much bigger challenge.
Peertube works well so far, I use this instance which specialises in hosting music creative stuff https://rankett.net/w/nqE8nNjbau7Q5UuDFCMT9z
I'm not sure what it takes but TILVids doesn't seem to have a problem loading videos...
You might not get 4k but is that really important?
TILVids has orders of magnitude less usage than YouTube, both in terms of storage and bandwidth.
Generally speaking you can expect to hit one bottleneck or another whenever you grow one order of magnitude, and fixing these becomes harder each time.
You're not wrong but again, does that really matter? I can watch videos and they look just as good to my eye as they do on YT.
That depends on what you want. Folks where talking about a YouTube replacement. If TILVids is that for you right now and you don't expect more content there then it's all good.
This, also all (well, many) of the creators do it to make money.
Where does the storage for torrents come from?
Torrents are peer to peer. The storage comes exclusively from seeders. If nobody is seeding a torrent, and nobody has the data, it is dead and the data no longer exists.
Not to mention the computing to re-encode stuff for different framerates and resolution
I wonder if IPFS could have a part in this? We'll find a solution.
IPFS has been very slow in my experience. Wonder if that could be improved.
I think the more peers there are the faster it is.