[jcfrei]

I really like the idea behind these types of decentralized projects. However I want to mention that they rarely take off. And it's usually not due to some technical or marketing related reason. The simple economic reason for the lack of their success is that centralized organization like YouTube can operate much more efficiently than a decentralized one like peertube. Some of the reasons are: Higher organizational efficiency (faster restructuring due to an explicit hierarchy), which allows them to quickly adapt to a changing environment. Benefiting from economies of scale (buying specialized hardware for video hosting in bulk). Being a for-profit organization provides them with a constant feedback loop whether they still meet consumer demands. On top of that a constant source of income allows them to have paid employees. Paid employees are (all year round) more motivated to continuously adapt the platform to changing consumer demands.

[birracerveza]

I just want a place (that I own) where I can store my videos, watch them and share them with people. Even if they didn't work on Peertube anymore it's already enough if they give me basic (but working) features. Not everything has to keep "improving" all the time.

A big THANK YOU to those who contribute to this project.

[smilliken]

You're right on all points.

Still, some of the most successful systems are decentralized: internet, telephone, email, torrent, bitcoin et al, the web (caveat that DNS is centralized), etc.

All of these examples are basically networks of people. Do we want these networks operated by private companies?

[jcfrei]

I think what you refer to as decentralized systems is for the most part applications on top of the TCP/IP protocol stack. Still I wouldn't call the examples you provided - with the exception of torrents - as decentralized. The internet and the telephone systems are mostly run by a few large ISPs and CDNs, email by a few large providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook), and for most people the web consists of Facebook, Youtube, Spotify, Instagram, etc and a few large newspaper sites.