[HN Gopher] We Are Trying Out PeerTube
___________________________________________________________________
We Are Trying Out PeerTube
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 165 points
Date : 2020-05-09 12:35 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (boilingsteam.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (boilingsteam.com)
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Wow.
|
| > When it comes to uploading videos, PeerTube is a joy to use and
| a lot more straightforward than YouTube with its bazillions of
| options and "is that for children??? is it OK to show to my 2
| years old?" ridiculous regulatory checks.
|
| So basically:
|
| - Google doesn't have checks: "Wow, look how irresponsible Google
| is."
|
| - Google does have checks: "Wow, look how annoying Google is."
| losteric wrote:
| Huh, yeah - it's almost like society is made up of millions of
| people with different pain points and priorities.
| faitswulff wrote:
| This is literally one checkbox. Taxes are ridiculous. This is
| just slightly less convenient.
| qiqitori wrote:
| First video played well (at reduced quality, 480p), with 6 peers.
| The other videos seemed to just have a single peer, and it seems
| like I had bad peering with that person/server, so everything was
| pretty much unplayable.
|
| Would be cool if there were a way to add peers from the command
| line. Then I could add a server or two with better peering and
| maybe be able to watch stuff.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Is there a way with PeerTube to use Backblaze and Cloudflare as
| an object store and content server of last resort? Similar to
| how Amazon S3 supports serving objects as torrents but you can
| also retrieve it directly over HTTPS.
| jdc wrote:
| I think if you had a torrent with an HTTP seed, you could
| import it into PeerTube.
| [deleted]
| Kye wrote:
| It seems like PeerTube adoption is slower than Mastodon.
| Blender's instance[1] is the only other non-toy instance I know
| of. It's probably because video is much harder to work with, so
| fewer people do it in the first place.
|
| [1] https://video.blender.org/
| notafraudster wrote:
| I opened this to see what "non-toy instance" might refer to. It
| does have a lot of videos. But the highest view count is just
| shy of 700, and of the hundreds of videos, only maybe a half-
| dozen have three-digit view counts. It seems like new videos
| are averaging <10 views. The same videos on YouTube seem to be
| averaging 6k-10k and the equivalent to the 700 view video has
| over 7 million views on YouTube.
|
| I don't know what the threshold for "toy" versus "non-toy" is
| in terms of seriousness, but I do know that I uploaded a video
| for a professor of mine 5 or 6 years ago, it's a 20 minute
| video of an unimportant speech he gave with bad audio and it is
| not SEOed at all (no real search terms attached to it) and it
| has more views than the highest viewcount video on the
| instance.
|
| I see one of two possible interpretations: The first is that
| given that you choose to upload to both YouTube and a PeerTube
| instance, no one will watch the PeerTube instance. So PeerTube
| is just an emergency hedge against something going south on
| YouTube. Insurance is good, but the premiums in terms of time
| might be a little high.
|
| The second is that it's possible some of those YouTube people
| wouldn't watch the videos on PeerTube even if they were removed
| from YouTube. That's a harder problem to solve.
|
| I guess I don't intend to undermine the nobility of the effort,
| just a natural skeptic when it comes to the feasibility of it
| going anywhere.
| [deleted]
| ObsoleteNerd wrote:
| I can't even get that to load, and that's half the problem with
| all of the YouTube alternatives in general. Youtube is annoying
| in more ways than I can count, but it works, and I can watch
| videos in it.
| jan_g wrote:
| Same here, stopping every few seconds, then buffering, at
| some point about 15s in, it simply went black and that was
| it.
|
| And I share your opinion on video playback alternatives -
| when a website serves me the video which isn't hosted on
| Youtube, I kind of groan inside, because of the bad
| experience of alternatives. Youtube just works, it loads fast
| and plays without interruptions.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| N=1, but it loaded just fine for me on a T-Mobile LTE
| connection in rural Tennessee. Buck the Bunny started
| streaming immediately on my iPhone when clicked, the kids
| love it.
| hyh1048576 wrote:
| I really hope Chinese start to use this as YouTube is being
| blocked by the Government.
| olah_1 wrote:
| The problem for the Fediverse will always be domains, in my
| opinion. It sounds silly to the technical demographic, but to a
| normal person, it is a massive issue.
|
| "Which server do I choose to get in bed with?"
|
| It's not just a question of which server do you trust to be a
| good actor and to not shut down tomorrow. It's also a question of
| which domain name do you want associated with your user account?
|
| Do you want alice@cucumbers.pizza? Or do you want
| alice@witches.bike?
|
| I believe that gmail won email not because of security and good
| user experience. I think they won because it removed the
| complexity of this problem.
|
| When I sign up for gmail, I can just be myself. I don't have to
| be myself + something else.
|
| Consequently, this is the strength of P2P networks. Remove the
| domain question entirely. I _am_ just a long string of characters
| (which is like my essence), but people call me by my name. Just
| like in normal life.
| emersion wrote:
| >When I sign up for gmail, I can just be myself. I don't have
| to be myself + something else.
|
| Well, it's still you + gmail.com. It could be you +
| fastmail.com, it could be you + posteo.de, it could be you +
| <insert other e-mail provider>. You still chose gmail over
| another provider, like you could choose cucumbers.pizza over
| another provider in the case of the Fediverse.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| The point was that GMail became so ubiquitus as to no longer
| be a part of the equation. I remember in 2009~ forms
| automatically adding @gmail.com.
| rajman187 wrote:
| Then this could not be the reason they won--initially it
| was not the "ubiquity of gmail" as it was just new to the
| market and could not be synonymous with email. They won by
| providing a good service for free with an ever-increasing
| capacity and iterating over features. Note that I'm not
| suggesting it was perfect or the best solution; plenty of
| questionable decisions made along the way (the way inbox
| was handled comes to mind)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| ...but gmail isn't that ubiquitous! A large majority of the
| emails I receive are from non-gmail addresses. True, most
| of these are related to where people work, but still, it
| drives decentralization, and I think most people understand
| that email [?] gmail.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| Many of those mails from non Google domains are still
| being processed by Gmail under the hood. Last I checked,
| I think Google was processing something like 2/3 of all
| email.
| wuunderbar wrote:
| The problem (if we're assuming it was one) still existed in
| the initial days of Gmail. Point still stands.
| paroneayea wrote:
| Hi! I'm one of the co-authors of ActivityPub, and I agree with
| you. I wrote a very out-of-date writeup about bridging
| ActivityPub and P2P networks some time ago:
| https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rwot5-boston/blob/master/f...
|
| I think you'll find it agrees with your assessments. DNS and
| SSL Certificate Authorities centralize an otherwise sensible
| decentralized system.
|
| It's out of date because work has continued. Here's some hints
| as to how we can improve the situation:
|
| - Decrease importance of server you're on by allowing easy
| account migration. One easy way to do this is to use mutable
| data to represent your activitypub profile in a content-
| addressed store... you can look at mutable links in IPFS as an
| example (the work that we're doing on Datashards is also
| relevant). (ActivityPub actually does support other URI types
| that are not https so this is no problem...) Don't like the
| server you're on? Update your actor profile to point its inbox
| URI at another place.
|
| - Support hosting over more p2p, easily self-hostable, NAT-
| punching and secure systems where you know you have a secure
| connection because the name of the server is actually the
| fingerprint of the key. That's actually what tor .onion servers
| and I2P servers are. There's no reason you can't run
| ActivityPub over such servers, and some people do, but it isn't
| widely supported because...
|
| - ... because of the way we've chosen to do names. The right
| answer isn't webfinger (which isn't in the ActivityPub spec but
| is what's popularly deployed), it's petnames:
| https://github.com/cwebber/rebooting-the-web-of-trust-spring...
|
| - And now you need a way to handle anti-abuse in a system that
| doesn't assume that domain names and instances are all too
| important. OcapPub outlines some of that (sadly unfinished, but
| the core ideas are there)
| https://gitlab.com/spritely/ocappub/blob/master/README.org
|
| - On top of all that, maybe add store and forward messaging to
| support nodes being offline. This can be done and we have plans
| but I need to write them in a more visible place.
|
| So in short, as one of the main authors of the biggest
| fediverse specs out there, not only do I agree, work is
| happening.
| olah_1 wrote:
| Hello! Thanks so much for the reply. This is exactly why I
| post critiques. I want to spur conversation.
|
| Everything I'm reading in your comment and in the links you
| shared, I agree with. I think the main difference is in our
| choice of tools.
|
| For the network mapping (for trust and petnames), I believe
| that a graph structure is required. Having this at a
| foundational layer is important for scalability and
| mathematical simplicity imo.
|
| Other than that, I think we agree on offline-first and multi-
| casting being requirements. And bonus points for keypair
| management through shamir's secret sharing and multi-device
| key management.
|
| Can I contact/keep up with you directly somewhere to continue
| the conversation?
| sneak wrote:
| What's your AP username? I would like to follow you to keep
| up with these developments and maybe pitch in where I can. I
| did a quick googling but didn't find anything.
| jadbox wrote:
| Thoughts on using something like ENS?
| [deleted]
| untog wrote:
| > I believe that gmail won email not because of security and
| good user experience. I think they won because it removed the
| complexity of this problem.
|
| I can't agree with that because Gmail was far from the first to
| provide this. Growing up all my friends and I had Hotmail
| addresses.
|
| Gmail won because of unlimited storage and to a lesser extent a
| far superior UI. The invitation system also gave it a "cool"
| factor others never had.
| amelius wrote:
| And the "beta" tagline gave it something magical.
| lxdesk wrote:
| To get a little philosophical, there's a kind of "lack of self"
| inherent in minimizing oneself into a normalized default like
| GMail. Someone with a common name ends up being
| "bob.jones.23@gmail.com" - and if you were the first
| "bob.jones", you will get no end of messages erroneously
| addressed to you and consequent exposure to the secrets of the
| others.
|
| The irony is that because email is so broken as an open
| platform, this normalized default so prone to collision has
| become the legitimate one, and everything else is filtered
| out...just like what tends to happen in other domains of
| society. It's easy upfront, but we're finally getting past the
| initial adoption of these technologies, and overall quality of
| service - from initial UX to issues like these - is going to
| become an increasingly large factor.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| While I don't agree that "gmail" is "be myself", I do think the
| biggest missing piece from the Fediverse is an easy,
| straightforward way to handle "I already have a domain and an
| email at that domain, I want to use that domain for the
| fediverse, without hosting anyone else's content that might
| create liability or annoyance".
|
| I have an email address. That unique identifier is also what
| I'd want to use for the fediverse. So how do I most easily do
| that?
|
| (This isn't going to be a universal expectation; email at your
| own domain is not incredibly common. But it's also not
| exceedingly rare, especially among technical folks, or among
| folks with a personal "brand" and social media presence.)
| jccalhoun wrote:
| not having a .com and one standard domain does make it tough. I
| know when Mastadon first got hyped I went to sign up and it
| asked to pick a federated server. I have no idea which one I
| picked.
| api wrote:
| It also means that if these get popular they will coalesce into
| an oligopoly. Those huge domains will then be pressured by the
| costs of hosting and the need to improve the protocol to
| monetize their users with ads or surveillance.
|
| Congratulations, we reinvented Facebook.
|
| Anything with any hierarchy in its namespace will follow this
| path. Only pure P2P has a chance of avoiding it, and pure P2P
| is very hard to build and scale.
|
| It also faces a serious protocol ossification challenge with no
| good solution (yet). Federated protocols face it too, but less
| as there are fewer cats to herd.
| thekyle wrote:
| I fail to see what the problem is here. So you end up with a
| couple big free providers that serve ads (like Gmail, Yahoo!,
| Outlook, etc.) and some smaller premium providers (like
| Fastmail, G-Suite, ProtonMail, etc.) and if someone really
| wants to they can even host their own. Also, if someone had a
| neat idea for a new Fediverse business they can launch it and
| interoperate with all the existing ones (like starting a new
| email service).
|
| How is that anything like reinventing a monolithic social
| network like Facebook?
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >It also means that if these get popular they will coalesce
| into an oligopoly.
|
| That's true of pretty much _any_ system, though: The Iron Law
| of Oligarchy[0] always applies.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
| eitland wrote:
| Eh. The Fediverse actually try hard already to avoid this.
| Fpr instance by blocking signups to popular instances an
| redirecting people elsewhere.
| encom wrote:
| >When I sign up for gmail, I can just be myself. I don't have
| to be myself + something else.
|
| I don't understand this sentence. What is the "something else"
| here that Gmail uniquely lacks?
| olah_1 wrote:
| > What is the "something else" here that Gmail uniquely
| lacks?
|
| The unique domain that I would otherwise have to associate
| myself with. "gmail" is so ubiquitous that it just doesn't
| mean anything anymore. It's just... the protocol.
|
| Tell someone that your email is "alice@alice.website" and
| even _that_ is saying something significant about yourself
| that you may not want to say.
|
| A big aspect of appearing "cool" is not letting on that you
| care so much. Social networks and messaging systems should
| allow people to be "cool" if they want to be.
| chongli wrote:
| _" gmail" is so ubiquitous that it just doesn't mean
| anything anymore_
|
| That doesn't explain how Gmail became ubiquitous. Back when
| it started, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL were very popular
| (among many others). Since it was not yet ubiquitous,
| Gmail's ubiquity could not be an explanation for success.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Gmail succeeded back then because everyone was switching
| to it for the free storage space and to be the cool
| person with a new gmail address. This happened long
| enough for new internet users to start choosing gmail for
| their first email, eventually becoming the majority email
| provider.
| Kye wrote:
| I still remember when they showed a counter for how much
| free space you had, and it increased steadily. That was
| before they just made it a big (for the time) fixed
| number.
| encom wrote:
| What @gmail.com says to me, is that the user is okay with
| Google reading their email.
| olah_1 wrote:
| That's exactly why I said "It sounds silly to the
| technical demographic".
|
| Many people on HN just straight up won't understand what
| I'm talking about.
|
| To a normal person, "@gmail.com" doesn't say _anything_.
| Give someone a different domain and they will literally
| look at you funny.
| mellow2020 wrote:
| Mine is firstname@firstname-lastname.domain, never had
| that problem. Plenty of email addresses require spelling
| out the part before the @ anyway, spelling the part after
| it out too poses no fundamental challenge to anyone I
| interacted with (who asked for my email address, that
| is).
| xaqfox wrote:
| It's not a problem, but it does send a signal--probably
| one that is a slight benefit as an adult in a technical
| line of work, but it might send a different signal for
| let's say, a teenager who is already struggling to fit in
| with peers. It may be a stereotype, but stereotypes exist
| regardless of how easy you or me think it is to register
| a domain. Sure someone could follow just a few simple
| steps found on the internet, but why does that person
| even care to?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Although, teenagers exchanging email addresses has fallen
| out of style recently in exchange for sharing Discord
| tags or Snapchat usernames/showing snapcodes.
| kevmo314 wrote:
| It's nice to see someone else have this point of view. I
| have a personal domain but still run @gmail.com because I
| get the impression that having my own domain makes me look
| like a complete nerd to my friends.
|
| Of course, I am, but no need to reinforce that.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| I have the same sentiment, but I think using other
| appropriately-named providers has the same effect. Nobody
| bats an eye when you say @fastmail.com or @mailbox.org
| for example.
| judge2020 wrote:
| There are other reasons to keep your @gmail, such as
| being a precaution in case you lose your domain as well
| as to use it for into your DNS/registrar account since
| using your domain's email to manage the DNS or domain
| itself is a bad idea in case DNS breaks email
| deliverability.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > having my own domain makes me look like a complete nerd
| to my friends.
|
| ...yes, of course; why else would you do it? ;)
|
| I'm semi-kidding; there are very real practical benefits,
| but I really do run email through my own domain, at least
| in part, because it sends a message.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| When someone asks your email, you say 'myemailhandle' and
| they will already ask if it's gmail. Way easier to speak and
| remember than if you have your own domain.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| THIS!
|
| Also, if someone asks me for my YT channel, I just say the
| channel name and they know where to look, youtube.com.
|
| With peertube you have to: give your channel name, remember
| then it's NOT youtube, tall then the correct instance, hope
| they won't type peertube on google and try to search for you in
| the first instance that comes up.
| emersion wrote:
| Just say it's your <instance name> channel instead of saying
| it's your Peertube channel. You don't necessarily need to
| explain what Peertube is each time.
|
| Also, searching for your account on any Peertube instance
| should work fine.
| megavolcano wrote:
| Why wouldn't you just give them a direct-link to your "not-
| youtube" channel?
| interrealmedium wrote:
| That's why you don't give out your channel name, but your web
| site. And from there you can link people to whatever you want
| them to see without any worries about where it is hosted.
| Kye wrote:
| Observation of YouTubers: if they have a website, they
| rarely if ever link or mention it.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| "Link is in the description."
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How would you suggest we improve on this?
| jbob2000 wrote:
| Maybe some kind of centralized lookup? Oh wait...
| FalconSensei wrote:
| And how do you handle all the
| @pewdiepie@someotherinstance? The original creator has to
| create an account on all instances to avoid fakes, or
| give up on the platform?
| olah_1 wrote:
| In a P2P model, there's multiple ways of going about
| this.
|
| But I tend to think that a true web of trust model makes
| the most sense. There may be 250 pewdiepie's on the
| network, but I'll just follow the one that (1) is closest
| in my network (followed by my friends) and (2) has the
| most follows (AKA highest trust).
|
| We already follow this logic of #1 and #2 today even on
| centralized networks. Web of trust just makes sense to
| people intuitively.
|
| Who do I know that already knows you? How else can I
| determine that you're legit? I'm gonna snoop your profile
| and see what looks legit. Ah, looks like a lot of normal
| people follow you already.
|
| Of course this isn't full proof. But it's not full proof
| on centralized networks either. We just need reasonable
| certainty.
| input_sh wrote:
| When you set up your email account, did you register
| username@everyemailprovider.com?
| FalconSensei wrote:
| One thing that would partially help would, at least, a
| global video search at peertube.com. With channel names you
| have a problem, as they would not be unique, BUT at least,
| you could return all users in all instances, and hope
| people check the avatar. That would make the process more
| transparent to users, as they would go to peertube.com and
| see everyone they follow.
|
| BUT, there's a huge problem. When you have a big creator on
| the platform, like PewDiePie for example. Every instance
| would have someone creating a fake PewDiePie. So, either
| the original creator would go to another platform, or they
| would need to use bots to create they users on all possible
| instances. So... creator will not have any incentive on
| using Peertube, as there's no 100% way to know who's the
| original.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Sounds like a keys.pub integration is necessary for
| cryptographic identity attestation and verification,
| since Keybase was acquired by Zoom.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22995792
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Unless all of this is completely transparent to the
| viewers and content creators, not gonna help.
|
| Remember when Mastodon started, the fake IDs were already
| a problem: https://mashable.com/2017/04/06/you-cant-
| delete-your-mastodo...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Agree entirely. I would donate to Keys.pub and PeerTube
| to ratchet up the UX and make it transparent.
|
| You shouldn't need Youtube, Twitter, or some other
| centralized provider to attest to your identity; _you_
| should be able to, with centralized providers only
| announcing or caching that attestation (just as keybase
| provided for with proofs). Maybe there's an easy way to
| tie this together with FIDO, U2F, etc. I need to do more
| research.
|
| https://fidoalliance.org/how-fido-works/
| vertex-four wrote:
| GMail won because I had to keep deleting email from my old
| provider, Google was pretending to "not be evil", and they
| offered me an ever-increasing amount of storage. Then I told my
| friends about it. Eventually, everyone used it because everyone
| who should've known better (myself included) recommended it to
| them.
| twomoretime wrote:
| I don't doubt that Google pre IPO probably believed in their
| motto. It's the investor influence that has gradually steered
| Google into lucrative but ethically questionable domains.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Not everyone recommended it to the masses. Some cautioned
| against it from the get-go - and Google was a problematic
| company with too much power already when GMail was being
| rolled out.
| detaro wrote:
| How is @gmail.com different than any other @domain.com?
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Do a social experiment. When you are at a store and they ask
| your email for your receipt, try giving then your email, and
| compare their expressions and the time they need to input it
| in the system if it's gmail or your own domain.
| input_sh wrote:
| I don't understand the issue at all. Never in my life have
| I ever used @gmail.com email address, and never have I
| experienced even the slightest inconvenience caused by that
| decision.
| detaro wrote:
| But the choice never was "gmail or your own domain". Pre-
| gmail it already was likely to be one of a few large
| providers, (and to a good degree still is). The argument
| sounds a bit like "gmail won because gmail won": For gmail
| to be the default assumption, they already have to have
| won.
| [deleted]
| samatman wrote:
| Arguments from networks effects are basically "X won
| because X won".
|
| The argument is that, at some critical point, X became
| the default choice, and stayed that way.
|
| Why it was gmail was interesting at the time, but isn't
| anymore; now it's literally just "people pick gmail
| because it's gmail".
| inetknght wrote:
| > _the choice never was "gmail or your own domain"_
|
| Before I had gmail, I used my ISP email address. While
| using my ISP email address, I set up an email server with
| a dynamic hostname -- homeip.net at the time. It 100%
| worked.
|
| There absolutely was a choice. You just had to be
| technical to know it existed in the first place.
| Skinney wrote:
| Is this an american thing? At least in Norway, it's not
| uncommon with personal domains, work emails, using your
| internet provider emails or using hotmail or icloud.
|
| It seems strange to me that gmail would be the default
| anywhere.
| shirshak55 wrote:
| Peertube is such a good project. I have used it and its good :)
| Its decentralized, unaffected by kids policy of youtube and much
| more. And the github support is pretty active.
| wuunderbar wrote:
| What do you use it for?
| mrfusion wrote:
| Wow I had no idea about peertube. Is it viable? That's really
| encouraging to hear about a competitor to YouTube
| wuunderbar wrote:
| It's a question of if they're going to be able to successfully
| battle copyright and otherwise illegal content issues (if and
| when they get popular).
|
| I don't believe the existence of their legalese dodging all
| liability will hold up in many countries for instances. As for
| user liability it's been shown that countries will battle those
| as well. Examples:
|
| 1) Usenet servers get routinely taken down and it becomes a
| game of wack-a-mole.
|
| 2) BitTorrent seed peers with illegal copyright content are
| routinely served DMCA notices.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I don't think that's an issue here, as PeerTube is a software
| package, not a hosting service (that I know of). I can use it
| to host Creative Commons videos, and you can use it to serve
| box office movies, but in either case PeerTube itself has no
| say in how you or I are using it.
| madengr wrote:
| There has got to be some alternative to YouTube. First it was gun
| videos, then "hate speech", then medical videos or anything that
| doesn't tow their line with the virus, and now they are screwing
| with people (the Peak Prosperity guy) discussing peer reviewed
| literature.
| stOneskull wrote:
| There are. People just have to nourish them. With content,
| presence and donations. And rather than one big youtube
| alternative, it's probably better having many places focusing
| on types of video, eg. Twitch or Dlive with live streams, that
| provide better experience in that area than youtube. Bitchute
| is in an interesting place where that'll often be where banned
| people from youtube will be. With enough nourishment from
| people, the video makers might not even go to youtube in the
| first place. These alternatives can chew into youtube as small
| goblins rather than one big one.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Any alternative to youtube faces the same challenges that drove
| youtube to do what it does. More specifically if they are
| significantly more relaxed around X, all the really crazy
| people doing X (ie: why youtube banned X in the first place)
| will go there causing that platform to get a reputation for
| being only about X.
| wazoox wrote:
| "La Cinematheque Francaise" uses peertube to make available rare
| and exclusive movies from its collection:
|
| https://www.cinematheque.fr/henri/
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean good for them diversifying but it's such a weird thing
| that of all the stuff to complain about on YT they go out of
| their way to mention having to tag videos as appropriate for
| children and/or for children.
|
| Like surely that's such a tiny thing. It seems like the author is
| trying to muster up some nondescript hate for YT when they were
| going to move for ideological reasons anyway.
| DanBC wrote:
| There's a weird mix of regulation and Youtube action that mean
| no-one (parents, youtubers, regulators) are happy with the
| current result.
|
| We want to protect children from predatory data harvesting, so
| we have laws like COPPA (in the US). YouTube's answer to COPPA
| was to just forbid children under 13 having their own account
| and launching Youtube Kids.
|
| Children under 13 want to watch youtube, and the content they
| want isn't always on YTKids, so they watch using a parent's
| account. They do this because they also want the like and
| subscribe buttons. But because YT doesn't know if it's a child
| or adult watching they serve ads for horror films or gambling
| or alcohol. But they also try to guess if it's a child watching
| the video and they'll serve ads for toys.
|
| Regulators were unhappy.
|
| Youtube tried to say to the regulators "we comply with coppa
| and we definitely do not target children for ads", but they
| were going to the potential advertisers and saying "we have the
| largest child audience and we know how you can reach them".
|
| Faced with further regulation Youtube bunted this onto the
| creators, and (weirdly, IMO) the regulators agreed and said
| that the creators (not Youtube) were responsible for ads placed
| against their content.
|
| Now you have content that is clearly, unambiguously, aimed at
| children where the Youtuber has to say the word "fuck" three
| times a video so they can tick the "not for kids" box to get
| decent ad revenue. There's a bunch of content that was fine for
| kids that now has to include tediously edgy shit just to avoid
| that "aimed at kids" classification. Youtube has no idea who is
| watching videos so the ad serving is awful. The regulators
| don't talk to each other but are clearly unhappy that
| unsuitable ads are pushed at kids.
|
| And parents are left not knowing if this content aimed at
| children actually is aimed at children or if it's going to
| include jokes about anal rape[1].
|
| [1] On the off-chance that anyone from YouTube is reading this
| this is a real fucking example, but there's no way to tell you.
| detaro wrote:
| The "appropriate for kids" thing has caused a lot of concern
| for youtubers due to how relatively heavy-handed it is.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| YouTubers are beholden to YouTube, YouTube is beholden to
| advertisers.
|
| When advertisers realized that a stupid percentage of their
| ad spend was going to four-year-olds watching six hours of
| unlicensed Disney characters in kinky scenarios it was the
| perfect storm for change.
|
| Keeping perceived ad value up to advertisers is why creators
| even have the opp to monetize at the rate they do, so it's
| really give and take.
| detaro wrote:
| Trouble with the FTC is much more responsible for this than
| advertisers.
| ajayyy wrote:
| Advertisers love to advertise to kids. This is in no way
| what the advertisers want.
| CM30 wrote:
| Yeah, this. Tagging a video as for kids doesn't just stop
| certain types of ads running on it, it also disables many
| core YouTube features there too. For instance, you can't use
| the miniplayer, add it to a playlist, etc.
|
| This puts creators of videos that might potentially appeal to
| kids in a bad situation, since either they tag it as such and
| watch their video get buried, or avoid doing so and hope
| YouTube or the FTC doesn't disagree with them.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| It has more to do with these recent YT changes causing big
| issues with monetization and community-building. Less revenue,
| but also comments are now disabled for example. If you make
| content which could in any way be aimed for kids, or has kids
| appearing in the video (with some nuances) then you don't get
| comments which are _huge_ for building a community. And if you
| get it wrong, the video or channel could be demonitized
| altogether based on YT 's interpretation.
|
| Essentially YT opted out of actually creating moderation tools
| and a team and instead just increased their ad revenue cut
| while placing further burden on independent creators who don't
| have millions in budgets to cushion this effect.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20963459/youtube-google-...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| The only reason you even have ad revenue is because the
| platform is in a state that allows the general public to use
| it.
|
| Yes, these things are hassles but on youtube you have access
| to an audience of billions, youtube eats the entire
| infrastructure costs and manages virtually everything for
| you.
|
| What do you get on peer tube, 500 views and laggy 480p
| videos, and no advertisement revenue at all?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I agree with you, and I have in mind a pretty decent
| solution worth exploring if I can generate the capital to
| throw at it. It involves separating the ad experience from
| the videos being consumed. You can still work out targeted
| deals, but the gist is that the advertiser generally has no
| control over which videos are seen before and after their
| ads and have no incentive to find out.
| Anon1096 wrote:
| That's how it used to be, then people on social media
| such as Twitter started reporting things like "why is
| this Bounty ad next to a controversial figure like
| Pewdiepie". That's when companies paying for ads started
| to care and pulled funding.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Right, so the idea is to separate the two experiences,
| like I said.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| You can't separate the two experiences. What the poster
| was saying is that it was already tried. They were
| already separated.
|
| And then advertisers realized that having your ads
| displayed on video content that is damaging to your
| company's image is generally Really Really Bad for PR. No
| company is going to sign on for your platform if they
| can't control where and how their ads are shown.
| ludamad wrote:
| Right, it's essentially ragging on a complete product. No one
| would say, come to peertube, where you have no idea what is
| meant for your child!
| superkuh wrote:
| That actually sounds like good advertising to me. Allowing
| children to join ruins everything. Not because of the
| children but because parents cannot think rationally about
| their "safety" (as if you can be hurt over the 'net). They're
| neurologically hardwired to be biased and prioritize
| perceived safety over all other issues. This leads to crazy
| commercial policies re: children that effect everyone (and
| even worse laws).
| azangru wrote:
| I wish there were a checkbox in account settings somewhere by
| ticking which you would essentially say, "I do not record
| videos for kids, just stop asking me already".
| jtvjan wrote:
| There is. In Studio, go to Settings > Channel > Advanced
| settings and make a selection.
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