There is, but it's still inferior to YouTube
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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If you've got the storage and bandwith, there's nothing stopping you from "mirroring" your favorite content creator's videos.
Copyright and ethics
The linux experiment is great
makertube has some good vids.
Youtube was known for hosting pirated content in the early days to attract people
This is what has stopped me from switching to Peertube.
Nebula is pretty good, though alot of it just doesn't interest me. I find it's more affordable and feel the handful of creators I follow there are worth the cost.
As much as I want to switch away from YouTube, it's my main source of entertainment and I don't see the creators I follow switching to any other platforms anytime soon.
When I look at the trending videos on YouTube, it makes me want to become a hermit and have no contact with society, the videos are so bad. I think the money side of YouTube has totally corrupted it.
As a PeerTube creator, I make videos as a way to teach/inform/entertain, not to make money. One way to make PeerTube work is to find a way to fund the hosts/instances that transcode and store the video files.
It would be interesting to create a crypto coin and have PeerTube users, both creators and viewers, to buy a small amount of the coin (a few dollars worth) when they register, then each video that they watch costs a small fraction of a coin paid to the instance hosting the video, and the viewer could add a tip to the creator if they liked the video. The amount paid to the instance might be an approximation of the cost to host the video. Accumulating the coin might be a game not an income source for the creators, but there might be enough money to fund the instances with this scheme.
There certainly is value in quality video that people are willing to pay for. It would be nice to find an alternative to advertising based video.
Another side of video that YouTube is not doing a good job at is creating community. The comment section is hard to follow, impossible to search, and it is transient, as new videos are created, comments on old videos disappear. I don't know how to do it, but creating a forum or a lemmy group for each creator or each video interest group with multiple creators involved would be extremely powerful.
I think the money side of YouTube has totally corrupted it.
It would be interesting to create a crypto coin and have PeerTube users, both creators and viewers, to buy a small amount of the coin [...]
Yeah... No, thanks.
I quite listening to a podcast that went hard into streaming crypto coin as a way to boost income. I think I like the idea in principle. But there is something that smells funny to me about cryptocurrency. And I don't think it actually works that well in principle. Funding open source and open access content is tough.
Yeah. Maybe call it microtransactions. Or maybe make it a game where you get "stickers" you can post on videos you like. "Stickers" being the equivalent of a like with your avatar posted somewhere on the video page.
I'm currently on nebula, 7.2€ a month seems fair. A lot of their videos are high quality. AND THE BITRATE. Oh don't get me started.. It's way higher than whatever YouTube offers
I haven't looked around in five years, but there was some interesting tech tinkering stuff on that diode instance. I'm assume people reuploading their own YouTube channels doesn't count, but there were some quality ones there even back then.
I'm old enough to remember a time before YouTube. When YouTube started, it wasn't about making money. There were no ads. No subscriptions. No sponsors. In the early days of YouTube it was just backyard videos. But it didn't take long for the connect to start getting good because it was the first of its kind, and everyone started using it. The problem now is, to convince people to use something else that, essentially does the same thing, but doesn't make people money. Good luck with that.
Money corrupted YouTube. And now, the idea that people can be "content creators" for a living means that there will likely never be a mainstream, ad free, subscription free video platform, where people just make videos in their spare time. Peer tube is cool, but your not going to see high quality, curated content like you get on YouTube. An I think that's probably a good thing.
I like that YouTube has higher quality content now and I don't mind that creators expect to be compensated for what is now much more work. I do mind that YouTube treats them like second class citizens and can take however much of the pie they can get away with.
YouTube was founded by 3 former PayPal employees and bought by Google for $1.65 billion just over a year after its creation. It launched its partner program in 2007 which is when people could start directly making money from the site - but for most big people on the platform, making money was the eventual goal anyway. There was always a plan for YouTube to make oodles of cash and for people to make money making videos on it.
If PeerTube doesn't have some type of monetary incentive, nobody except for mild hobbyists making subpar content are going to migrate over.
I remember it too. I just also remember how much of a quality improvement career YouTubers made. It’s still a good and valid thing imo, they make good videos for money. All platforms should facilitate that. Not facilitating that brings us back to an internet I honestly don’t think had a lot of value, just random family videos mostly.
With instance subscriptions you could cut out the huge cut Google takes and make creator unions essentially much easier to make.
Am I allowed to throw my hat in the ring? I'm definitely No expert and I'm constantly learning, but I have vods of my live streams, gaming and tech, and I'm running Fireside Fedi a show about talking with different folks around the Fediverse. Let me know if I can post the link. I don't want to self promote of that's not what folks are looking for here.
Aldo I would say that we're still very early in the Fediverse life cycle. Majority of these folks aren't paid or are a shoestring budget and solo with tiny teams. So if we want to see this experiment survive we have to do more than what we've done in the past.
Talk to content creators you enjoy. Let them know you'd like to see their content on the Fediverse. Especially if you're a patreon member. Create content yourself. The Fediverse will succeed or fail based on our actions.
The internet wasn't born in a day and a LOT of projects failed, because everyone took the easy centralized way. This time we have to fight for it to remove their claws.
Let me know if I can post the link. I don’t want to self promote of that’s not what folks are looking for here.
Go for it.
I know of at least one. The channel is called The Linux Experiment.
@thelinuxexperiment_[email protected]
I enjoy his content a lot and really appreciate the fact that hés putting his content on peertube.
I hope people enjoying Peertube are supporting the project and creators financially. Otherwise it won’t have any future sadly.
Well, like all of the fediverse. It's a bunch of volunteers who run the instances out of pocket. They need donations to keep going.
And content? I've only just started using it properly recently (here) but was happy to see a channel putting out trailers:
I was wondering about jailbreaking trailers from YouTube but, apparently, the studios own the copyright. I don't think they care about YouTube channels uploading them because it is extra publicity but it is a legally gray area.
without ad revenue or subscription revenue I don’t know how quality content can come to PeerTube.
I saw a video where a YouTube channel broke down their income (I'll try and find it but there are probably similar ones out there) and the amount coming directly from ads was quite small. Other sources of money include:
- Sponsorship
- YouTube's built in subscription
- External subscriptions like Patreon
- Merchandise
- Physical media deals
Like Spotify, the cut from streaming isn't great but those on it can leverage their profile in other ways.
The Fediverse still has a bit of a problem with monetisation but Ghost is working on joining and that is the equivalent of Substack with different subscription levels and I think most Fediverse services could do something similar. So Peertube could build in a "subscribe" button so people who enjoy your content could sign up to throw you a buck a month. Obviously a similar system could be added to the instance so you could donate to them, as hosting video is expensive.
I do wonder if we need a FediPay/PayFed service that other services could just plug in, so you'd have a central account across your Fediverse identities - subscribing on Pixelfed could get you subscriber exclusive Peertube content.
Would be interesting if Liberapay could somehow be built into PeerTube. So you simply click the “Support” button and it asks how much and then another click. Done. The rest is handled by Liberapay, which have been set up earlier.
Yeah, it has to be frictionless or you lose people along the way.
Although, looking around, this channel has a "support" button with PayPal and Patreon links. It's a little crude but works.
For ease of use, it probably has to be a bit slicker and "one-click" but it's a start.
Yes but good luck finding it.
There's a couple youtubers that mirror their content on PeerTube. The Giddy Stitcher for example uploads to Makertube.net
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