[ruffsl]

SyncPlay + MPV is a nice open source way to go about it, sharing time control and synchronizing playback.

With youtube-dl installed, you can also stream YouTube together as well (Google Hangouts used to be about to do this before they purged all the integration features), not just local media files. But playing from local media files though helps save a lot of bandwidth when watching with friends with limited connectivity, or in prioritizing voice/video call quality.

There's also browser extensions such as Netflix party, or mobile apps such as Rave, but the first is still buggy, and the later is a bit sketchy.

Plex also has a watch together feature, so everyone can just stream from your own media server, no exchanging files beforehand, but only supports mobile platforms so far, looks like browser or PC support is still in the works.

Discord has been the best internet voice app I've found for movie watching, as the voice activated mics and background noise suppression improves the watching experience for everyone else considerably.

Anyone else have suggestions?

[est31]

Thanks for the overview of available products! It's great to hear that others saw this as a potential market as well. Google wasn't the first search website, MS office not the first word processor, Apple didn't invent the mouse. The market still seems ripe for someone to make a "proper" social media watching product, and I think there is no better moment for it than the current corona times.