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.
It’s kind of wild to me that the alternatives to YT aren’t… better. I mean, it’s not as if YT is brand new.
The PeerTube iOS app is just a mess. And I’m not sure, but I think the Odysee app hasn’t been updated since the Second World War.
Holy crap, my entire response sounds like a whiny kid. Maybe instead of me complaining, I should throw up a PT instance and do something meaningful.
They may be better than YT was when it was the same age. IIRC, Youtube used to use flashplayer, and most videos were something like 480p.
Storing and serving 4/8k 60 fps video is extremely expensive. It’s not like twitter where you could run it of a phone if you wanted to.
Fair point. I’m sure many would disagree with me, but for web video anything more than HD is pointless except for very niche content. But even HD streaming at scale is taxing and expensive.
Airlines make the majority of their money from a small percentage of flyers paying business and 1st class. I think there’s a world where this principal can be applied to something like peertube hosting in some form.
That’s true, I didn’t even think about that. Having a mastodon instance can be super cheap. But it’s also not usually storing high quality media.
Yeah but peertube is being developed by just one guy from backend to frontend and they have done great work. It will get better ig but still its very very difficult to make users and creators change platform.
edit: typo
I mean I did throw up a PT instance and publish my videos exclusively on it, and I’m getting decent views if the topic is interesting and I promote it on hacker news, I’m getting several thousands of views. But that does not fix the PeerTube mobile app, nor the fact that finding content is practically impossible and the subscribe mechanism constantly randomly stops working, there is no app for my TV (like SmartTube) etc.
I’m all in with PeerTube as a creator, but as a user it’s a terrible experience.
Do you mind sharing your channel? EDIT: Nvm found it. Added the new hyprland video to my watch list.
And can I ask how you find other interesting channels?
I’m sure you weighed the pros and cons of Peertube vs Odysee. What made you choose peertube?
I can’t run my own Odysee instance to be independent of third parties which might moderate away my content if they don’t like it. My content my rules.
There are browser extensions that automatically switch from YouTube to an alternative platform if video is available on both.
Watch on Odysee Firefox LINK
PeerTube Companion
Firefox LINKOh and finding new content is kind of impossible, I wish PeerTube was set up more like Lemmy with communities which you subsribe to instead of channels people need to follow explicitly.
SepiaSearch is the best I’ve found for finding content on peertube.
I have it build in into my instance and while it is the best, doesn’t mean it is usable.
I’m honestly not sure why PeerTube isn’t bigger than it is, aside from a few things.
I would love to have PT as a nice, open competitor to YouTube, like Mastodon is to X and Bluesky (I know Mastodon is much smaller, but you get my meaning). I’d love to see, say, bands throwing their music videos there.
If nothing else, having people yoink YT content and chuck it onto PT. I know they probably can’t, but still.
Can you make money on peertube like you can on YouTube?
Not like on YouTube, but differently.
How so?
Sponsors, paywall, using it to advertise or support your business, etc.
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.
The very platform you’re clinging to is on Death’s Door and they’re actively breaking YouTube’s terms of service while still using the service.
None of the other platforms are even close to replacing YouTube. They can’t handle the scale or the features. And none of them are heading towards being able to accomplish this.
YouTube is a capitalist utopia funded with more money than God. They provide unlimited free storage and transmission of all videos sent to their platform. They fleece videos for copyright and legal impingements. They gather corporations willing to spend on advertisements and link them directly to end users uploading data, and when they reach a threshold, they pay them.These funds pay for the unlimited amounts of storage at levels that no other platform could handle.
The other platforms that are open to us don’t make enough money to do any of those things. We’re relying on the funding, development, and administration of a couple of generous strangers.
Let’s be clear : how YouTubers will survive without ads money on another platform ?
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You could make a service that is objectively better than YouTube in every single way but unless creators are getting paid >90% of them won’t use it. There’s a reason TikTok creators always try and grow their YouTube following and its because it pays significantly better.
I agree with you for the majority of “content creators”. But I think there’s a sizable number of people who aren’t interested in making videos for a profit and I imagine there’s a fair overlap with people in this community and the fediverse at large.
If I were to create videos I would make them on either peertube or Odysee. I wasn’t really aware of either platform other than vague whispers of them until recently, and I find it difficult to gauge the community sentiment on which of these platforms would be suitable for finding interesting content as well as posting it, hence this post.
Yeah, YouTube’s value is not so much the content creators but that its the go to place for the average person to upload something.
So if you need a tutorial on something like fixing something at home or finding an item in a game someone who hasnt uploaded since then can be the one who provided value.
And that’s the part that’s difficult to replace. Youtube is like a wikipedia video resource.
