PeerTube v5: the result of 5 years’ handcrafting(framablog.org) |
PeerTube v5: the result of 5 years’ handcrafting(framablog.org) |
Hear me out: the Internet was supposed to be about peer-to-peer connected computers, and the privileged roles ISPs and later "cloud" providers assumed changed that for the worse.
It was SUPPOSED to enable me, myself, hosting my videos, on my computer(s) and making them available to whomever I want to, including everyone. This is how early protocols were designed. Everyone was supposed to be a SMTP (e-mail) host. Everyone was supposed to run FTP and HTTP. Everyone got an equally routable (the link quality depends, of course) address, not some 3rd level NAT retail monstrosity. If you needed aggregation, you make search sites like Google (and AltaVista and others before it) and RSS to pull data from multiple sources and CACHE IT LOCALLY.
Of course I welcome projects like PeerTube, but I'd much rather go back to the original idea. No ISPs or Clouds, only Peers.
With Internet like water grid - a utility.
I think maybe you misunderstand PeerTube? It is exactly what you say the internet should be.
You can use it to host your videos yourself, on your own computer, and make them available to whomever you want to.
You can use a hosted version too, but it's not required. It's also completely possible to host in your own cupboard, or to use a cloud server you control. On whatever instance you use, you can still talk to your friends directly, through peer-to-peer connections to whichever instance they choose to use. It does even support RSS, and other PeerTube instances do indeed cache the video locally!
It has its own new set of problems of course, but it does seem like it's a strong step in exactly the direction you're interested in.
The main problem aren't privileged actors like ISPs (although shit like asymmetric DSL or CGNAT definitely prevents people from self-hosting)... it is abuse and the complete unwillingness of almost everybody from private actors over governments to international organizations to put a fucking stop on it.
You open up a server on the Internet? Not even sixty seconds and the first Shodan or whatever using script-kiddies will attempt to hack you. And god forbid you run some popular software that can be sniffed like Drupal or Wordpress - you end up in Shodan just as well and will be automatedly exploited as soon as the CVE gives enough hints to people to write an exploit. You wish to send your own emails? You find yourself greylisted by almost everyone in their futile attempts to keep their users from spam. You wish to communicate with someone? Better read up on crypto because governments and ISPs just love to mine data. Operate a service that allows user-generated content? Beware for a deluge of everything from warez groups to CSAM spreaders that can and will expose you to serious legal liability.
The old protocols were all designed with implicit trust in mind and the assumption that no actor on the internet would abuse their position. That worked reasonably well as long as it was only universities (but even then, first viruses appeared from enterprising prankster students)... but once the Internet got mainstream, all of that broke down, and it completely collapsed once people started realizing they might make money shilling grey-imported penile enlargement pills. And the more people were on the Internet, the harder the work of "abuse departments" got, which led to most organizations simply dismantling the department or redirecting complaints to /dev/null. The fact that some governments (particularly China and Russia) take a completely blind eye towards hacking originating from their countries as long as they themselves aren't targeted (just look how many malware samples have a dead-man switch when they encounter information that the target might be Russian) just makes the problem worse.
Unfortunately, by that time the old protocols and standards were so widespread in use there was no chance to replace them, and so layers upon layers upon layers of bullshit got placed over the old layers in the end.
I've hosted my own website and email server for decades. It does take a little work to keep up with things like DMARC, reverse DNS etc, but if you get a good score on https://internet.nl/test-mail/ and don't spam anybody, self-hosted email works fine. FYI you are misusing "greylist."
No it wasn't. The internet was supposed to be a a global network of networks, and it is.
> It was SUPPOSED to enable me, myself, hosting my videos, on my computer(s) and making them available to whomever I want to, including everyone.
No it wasn't. ARPANet was supposed to be a network of computing facilities that could withstand a nuclear attack, and Internet was the effort of opening up such infrastructure to scientific and commercial entities (universities and companies). For quite a while the idea of the general public having internet at home wasn't even an idea.
> Everyone was supposed to be a SMTP (e-mail) host.
No they weren't. Pretty much nobody had their own dedicated computer, and they just had a shell account on a shared computer dedicated to a specific organization. And the administrator of such computer would set up mailing facilities on such host. Hence the local-delivery (/var/spool/mail and stuff).
Also, how would you connect to the Internet without an ISP ? (Well there are mesh networks I guess, but AFAIK they are much slower, both in throughput and latency ?)
There is only one paid developer, working for the French non-profit Framasoft – and I think it's important to share this in non French-speaking spaces.
If you want to help them "Collectivise / Convivialise the internet": https://soutenir.framasoft.org/en/
Is there a french version of this article?
[0]: https://framablog.org/2022/12/13/peertube-v5-le-resultat-de-...
That's not the spirit we want. Peertube is not a product to compete with existing video websites. Peertube is a product you use to self-host your videos, for you, for your band, for your org, for your company, anything. It's about taking control, not selling junk.
EDIT: I fear I might have been unclear, I am in no way affiliated to Peertube
That requires what iandanforth refers to as "product and market building".
Making a good, ethical product look attractive isn't evil.
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-announces-bigge...
This is such an underappreciated piece of technology that I hope many intitutions will adopt, at least as a backup against using the usual Youtube/Facebook/Vimeo/Twitter/Instagram as content hosts
I've wanted to create a combat themed video site for years, since most sites get censored, and PeerTube always seemed like a perfect solution.
Basically, what you are asking is possible, and you should navigate around the documentation specific to the Peertube api. (Sorry, trying not to sound like a guy who responds with "RTFM"....but, i guess i sort of am; sorry :-)
But, hey, what you want is possible! :-)
That's why I think said institutions should donate to the project ;)
On Youtube it's easy, there's much more high quality content about any topic imaginable than I ever could watch in my limited time on this planet, but on PeerTube instances I haven't found anything that made me come back to that particular creator.
So my question is, can you recommend a good cooking PeerTuber, or a good one discussing the newest single board computers? It's really difficult finding something worth watching.
My concern is, that if I host a peertube instance and anyone uploads illegal stuff, I am going to hang for it. So perhaps I would like a Peetube instance just for my friends an me, where I can personally review each video, to not get into trouble. Basically doing the job which the big platforms are too high and noble to properly do and use their algorithms for.
But in most places, that isn't the case. If there is something illegal on your server, you're going to be held responsible for it, especially if you don't have robust evidence of who else put it there (ie. a verified and accurate name and address of the uploader - something that illegal video uploaders rarely leave behind).
PeerTube v1 (Oct. 2018) allows you to create a video platform with federation, peer-to-peer streaming, redundancy, search tools and multilingual interface.
PeerTube v2 (Nov 2019) brings notifications, playlists and plugins.
PeerTube v3 (Jan. 2021) adds federated search, live and peer-to-peer streaming.
PeerTube v4 (Dec. 2021) allows to customise each platform’s homepage, to sort and filter displayed videos, and to manage them more easily.
Also, PeerTube itself is pretty nice, I'm still hosting v4 for my own needs and use it as a solution for backing up and encoding stream VODs from Twitch. Might eventually get a YouTube account, but still keep it as a backup just to minimize the risk of losing the videos, though storing hours of them does definitely take up some space on my server's HDDs, backups of those included.
I'm always quite concerned that it's practically a one man project, though. I hope it can build the community of developers that it deserves.
I don't hear much about IPFS these days.
It is neither convenient nor especially easy. It's mostly managed by a home-grown bash script that uses yt-dlp to archive videos, organized by playlist, and then update a IPNS key.
I plan on writing up a blog post about it at some point, if there's interest. I mentioned the project to the particular creator's fan discord (the creator doesn't participate with the community at all themselves) and there was a surprising amount of backlash from the community leaders. Most of the concerns revolved around the notion that I was somehow stealing ad revenue from the creator (despite my explanations that IPFS is not at all a convenient platform for video consumption). I might take the IPFS node off of the public network to circumvent this worry, and only peer with other parties interested in archival of that specific channel.
I hope they get back to making useful software soon, but I'm not holding my breath.
At least it's all open source.
However, lately I've been wishing for a tool where lectures could be hosted that has nice searchable transcripts, allows people have have comments and discussion based on the time. Something kinda like Loom but more oriented around making lectures annotateable by students for referring to later.
Why do you think that ?
AV1 seems to be supported, albeit still with some bugs maybe ?:
https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues?q=is%3Aissue+a...
Did you file a bug report?
May I shamelessly suggest that you check out my PeerTube channel that I host on my server? :)
I have only one video so far, but will make more videos in the future.
This channel is about programming, system administration, and computing.
In the first video we (royal we) look at using ChatGTP to solve the first of the Advent of Code problems in Rust.
The video is called “No Brain Required - ChatGPT solves Advent of Code in Rust, episode 1”. So named for reasons that will become apparent when you watch the video :)
From your comment I get that you haven't checked into peertube in a while.
There is tilvids.com that is slowly becoming the premier high quality peertube instance that is taking baby steps into being an educational instance. They will gladly host any creator if they align with their goals.
Besides, if a cooking creator wants to roll their own instance, invite other cooking creators to join in, tilvids.com would gladly peer with them.
The point is, tilvids.com is showing how you can build a good community outside of YouTube. A good step
I'll say that the depth and breadth of topics still seems lacking (lots of meta content about FOSS and the fediverse, which is only interesting to early adopters), but if it becomes easier to start, join, and use Peertube instances, I feel confident this will change over time.
My main entrypoint is usually sepiasearch.org, where I'm looking for specific topics. And more often than not the results were a bit disappointing.
As far as breadth of topics...you are correct, it's still very FOSS-heavy. That said, we do have some other interesting channels worth following. Here are a few:
Yesterkitchen, dedicated to the history behind recipes! https://tilvids.com/c/yesterkitchen_channel
Let's Talk Philosophy, focused on learning about great philosophers from history! https://tilvids.com/c/letstalkphilosophy_channel
ArtsHole, who covers artists throughout history! https://tilvids.com/c/theartshole_channel
FastPassFacts is dedicated to talking about different historical/social topics from theme parks. https://tilvids.com/c/fastpassfacts_channel
The big challenge is trying to find creators who are willing to use a video site that doesn't have direct monetization. I can talk to them until I'm blue in the face about the importance of controlling your own means of hosting and distribution, etc. but at the end of the day, making content takes a ton of time. They won't do it unless people are watching. So if you want to support alternative platforms, the best thing you can do is USE them, and reach out to your favorite content creators and let them know that you're using them.
i literally remember this guy coming on peertube github and reading about him explaining how he was planning to set up a educational instance.
anyway, as i said, this is an experiment supposed to urge more people to take the plunge into becoming hosts and managing their communities. If there is a bad apple down the road, the community can self adjust accordingly.
the point is, people need to be aware about choice. this is doing a good job
I don't know about cable, but I suspect it's the same there.
OTH, fiber-based internet often has symmetric speeds. Don't know the stats, but I suspect most fiber ISPs gives you that.
https://i.postimg.cc/vTHXhxFC/7089-F268-8-C2-A-4935-A280-841...
Sure, it's possible to defend against hackers to a degree, but even using a completely static website still leaves you open to attack surfaces in the webserver software or to remotely exploitable vulnerabilities in the Linux network stack.
> FYI you are misusing "greylist."
I assume we share the definition of "greylisting" to be the receiver MTA blocking the first delivery of an incoming email with "try again later", and the sender MTA then retrying after that time frame? If yes then this exactly describes my experience in administrating self-hosted mail servers with popular large mail providers.
My mail server (MailInABox) has postgrey enabled by default, greylisting incoming email each time email is received from a new address. I thought that was a little overzealous so turned it off.
Pretty annoying to test for this reliably as well...
