I'm really skeptical of its success primarily due to the immense costs of hosting video. Peertube exists already, and isn't nearly as successful as Mastodon/Lemmy primarily due to its hosting costs.

[–] jeffhykin@lemm.ee 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah I wish there was a way to contribute to the hosting with torrent-like seeding. My phone can seed a torrent, but its not going to host an instance.

1 like = seed for 1 month seems like an interesting model

[–] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Naah I thought about this before and came to the conclusion that this isn't that bright of an idea. Here's why.

Why's video hosting so expensive in the first place? Because it needs a lot of computational power, storage and bandwidth. All three things that a mobile phone does not have. If you make your client's mobile phone do this stuff, then you're going to slow down their phone, make it heat up more, make it degrade faster (because it would be drawing power from the battery) and take up a huge chunk of their bandwidth.

Think of how video calls drain battery really fast. It's just shifting the costs of hosting from the hosting side to the consumer side while making the entire operation a lot more complicated and a lot more inefficient.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Take out the phone part and allow users to host videos in a decentralised way on their home computers and it's a genuinely good idea though. I have a server running with plenty of storage and reasonable upload speed. I could easily dedicate a terabyte or so, as long as I'm not the sole hoster.

It would be a hell of a lot cheaper than dedicated hosting. The only issue is legal problems when someone is unknowingly hosting abuse material, which is something that happens from time to time on all services like this, and an individual could be done for distribution without the protection big centralised services have. You'd just have to hope mods are on top of it.

Actually something like a debrid service but for peertube might work. You can get huge amounts of storage for cheap because a lot of it is shared, you might ask them to host a huge torrent file, but most torrent files serve multiple users, so the cost is distributed. Peertube could work a similar way if it were more mainstream.

[–] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sure! Remember though, that you are funding this project using your own money. How much does your server cost? How much does the electricity to run your server cost? You would need Gbps speed internet. How much does that cost?

You would be funding this out of your own pocket. Thank you for doing that! Would there be a thousand more people willing to do this? What happens if you lose your job? What happens to the server?

As you can see, this is not a technological issue, but a funding one. If you can generate funding for this somehow, you have a very viable model! IF you can find the funding.

I am saying that funding this would be difficult. I see people just yapping about FOSS, but not funding it when the time comes.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

What are you talking about? I don't think you understood the concept of decentralised torrent-like hosting.

I'm currently talking to a peertube hoster about server costs, which I may be able to justify to host my own videos plus a little extra to pitch in for others who can't justify the expense. Plenty of professional creators could easily justify it as an exit strategy or backup for youtube.

These conversations are happening, just not with you, presumably because you're just being negative about it and not actually doing something, so why would anyone bother to bring it up with you?

[–] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee -1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Ok, good luck on your project. We'll talk when any given peertube project (based on the donation based funding model alone) reaches break even.

I swear I've reviewed the finances about this a million times over. Funding models in their current form just don't work. Content creators getting free hosting from YouTube with huge audiences are struggling to keep themselves afloat. But whatever, good luck on your project I suppose. We really need YouTube's monopoly to end, so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Also, you'll talk to me after it's a solved problem? Why would I be interested in that? You have no interest in helping solve it now and I see no reason why you'd magically become useful after the fact.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

If you can demonstrate that you even understood the concept of decentralised torrent-like hosting then I'll pay attention to whatever else you had to say.