PeerTube is a decentralized and federated alternative to YouTube. The goal of PeerTube is not to replace YouTube but to offer a viable alternative using the strength of P2P and WebTorrent protocols.
Being built on ActivityPub means PeerTube is able to be part of a bigger social network, the Fediverse (the Federated Universe). On the other hand, P2P technologies help PeerTube to solve the issue of money, inbound with all streaming platform : With PeerTube, you don't need to have a lot of bandwidth available on your server to host a PeerTube instances because all users (which didn't disable the feature) watching a video on PeerTube will be able to share this same video to other viewers.
If you are curious about PeerTube, I can't recommend you enough to check the official website to learn more about the project. If after that you want to try to use PeerTube as a content creator, you can try to find an instance available there to register or host yourself your own PeerTube instance on your own server.
The development of PeerTube is actually sponsored by Framasoft, a french non-for-profit popular educational organization, a group of friends convinced that an emancipating digital world is possible, convinced that it will arise through actual actions on real world and online with and for you!
Framasoft is also involved in the development of Mobilizon, a decentralized and federated alternative to Facebook Events.
If you want to contribute to PeerTube, feel free to:
report bugs and give your feedback on Github (https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/) or on our forums (https://framacolibri.org/c/peertube/38)
submit your brillant ideas on our Feedback platform (https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/)
Help to translate the software, following the contributing guide (https://docs.joinpeertube.org/contribute-getting-started?id=translate)
Make a donation to help to pay bills inbound in the development of PeerTube. (https://support.joinpeertube.org/en/)
> Is there a solution to being liable for distributing illegal/immoral content as a peer on PeerTube?
I believe you misunderstand the technology.
There are two components of Peertube.
The server you either self-host or you use someone else's. If you are hosting a server and you host other people's content, you register for liability protection under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and section 512 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
The client is where the "peer" in peertube comes in. If you want to be safe from liability, don't watch illegal/immoral content. You will be fine.
> I believe you misunderstand the technology.
>
> There are two components of Peertube.
No, the people who run Peertube misunderstand how to communicate. This comes up every time Peertube is discussed. People think Peertube is a replacement for YouTube and that they can upload their videos to peertube.com or something similar. Then they learn, that, no, it’s just the software to let you run your own YouTube-like site. Then they have questions like the one above and get replies telling them they don’t understand. Maybe Peertube should just find a better way to communicate what they offer?
I think they might be talking about hosting a PeerTube server with open registration? And so random people might publish illegal content via their server?
i got hit hard by this, even w a low account quota a group hit my instance hard from many CIDRs and i was left w a huge bill. this was pretty much worst case scenario automated accounts uploding rips.
and i just looked and peertubes admin tools still leave a lot to be desired
I was recently browsing some old saved playlists of mine on youtube. Youtube had 'updated' them to be effectively the same recommended playlist it always offers me.
Its sad and scary that what amounts to an archive of a generation of creativity is effectively only being rented by the people who made it so. Relying on youtube as an archive of some of the Internets greatest content is concerning giving Googles unfortunate track record of managing, well, all of its products.
It seems inevitable that someday yt will die. However and whenever that death shapes up, I hope the creatives of the world have an opportunity to use something like this (or other alternatives like floatplane) to back up their content. Yt is an amazing thing, and too valuable to leave in the hands of google.
yt-dl and a batch file that I run with Task Scheduler every day has brought me some relief with regard to ephemeral content on youtube. I also grab the subtitles and throw them into a database so that I can find a video by something I remembered they said in a certain episode.
The sepiasearch.org API is better than YouTube search, IMHO. Would be nice if the JSON results had a key for the 11-character YouTube ID if one exists. Perhaps many videos published via YouTube will also be published via PeerTube. Also wish it was possible to "disable" use of Unicode in JSON values. As someone who searches and browses YouTube from the command line in textmode, I find the use of Unicode in YouTube titles annoying. Imagine if HN titles were filled with emojis and other garbage.
curl -A "" "https://sepiasearch.org/api/v1/search/videos?search=test&boostLanguages[]=en&nsfw=true&start=0&count=500"
curl -A "" "https://sepiasearch.org/api/v1/search/video-channels?search=test&start=0&count=500"
curl -A "" "https://sepiasearch.org/api/v1/search/video-playlists?search=test&start=0&count=500"
Is this going to have the problem that if you watch the latest kpop video it'll stream immediately but if you watch an obscure but fascinating wood turning video by a cool old dude with ten subscribers it'll take hours to buffer?
Because if so it's not a viable alternative to YouTube.
It may sound shallow, but this won't take off until they get the graphic design right - everything about this looks engineering and technical and not consumer.
I agree, and I would add that that frankly I don't think it will take off at all until the UX for syndicating between YouTube and PeerTube were also buttery smooth. Even then, there need to be incentives for creators in addition to disintermediation (e.g. running ads on videos without having to negotiate your own deals). Then again, maybe "taking off" means "techies casually enjoy it" rather than "could become a serious threat to YouTube".
Not to mention that the only example screenshot in this announcement is of a (half?) naked person. Not the best way to advertise that it’s ready to replace mainstream video hosting.
I can’t tell if this is obliviousness on the part of the author, or if it’s _intended_ to telegraph ‘you can host and find things that wouldn’t be allowed on YouTube.
Being built on ActivityPub means PeerTube is able to be part of a bigger social network, the Fediverse (the Federated Universe). On the other hand, P2P technologies help PeerTube to solve the issue of money, inbound with all streaming platform : With PeerTube, you don't need to have a lot of bandwidth available on your server to host a PeerTube instances because all users (which didn't disable the feature) watching a video on PeerTube will be able to share this same video to other viewers.
If you are curious about PeerTube, I can't recommend you enough to check the official website to learn more about the project. If after that you want to try to use PeerTube as a content creator, you can try to find an instance available there to register or host yourself your own PeerTube instance on your own server.
The development of PeerTube is actually sponsored by Framasoft, a french non-for-profit popular educational organization, a group of friends convinced that an emancipating digital world is possible, convinced that it will arise through actual actions on real world and online with and for you!
Framasoft is also involved in the development of Mobilizon, a decentralized and federated alternative to Facebook Events.
If you want to contribute to PeerTube, feel free to: