I'm not as optimistic as you.

Hosting video is really expensive. Making video is really expensive. YouTube was losing money for about 15 years despite having a monopoly on online video for most of that time and the best advertising tech in the world. I don't think it's possible to make a free competitor to YouTube.

On the paid side, there's plenty of streaming services that are making money. But you have to be already established in order to get a contract. And since you will typically have to use social media in order to get past that initial barrier, it might as well include YouTube.

However, my guess is that YouTube makes the majority of it's money from larger channels. If the larger channels all join paid streaming services(e.g. Nebula) then gradually that may be able to bring YouTube down.

I was just reading this issue on Github last night and I really don't see how PeerTube is any better than a traditional server for hosting videos. The peer part of it seems to have such a miniscule impact on the whole thing that it just feels like a gimmick. I've read that the biggest problem for PeerTube instance hosts is storage and not the bandwidth. The only thing that peers can save you is tiny bit of bandwidth from what I understand.

So from what I've gathered, relying on peers only for hosting the video is completely unviable. And that makes sense, especially for old, unpopular videos, there will be no peers to begin with. Even if every video on the site is being "seeded" by viewers, the reliability of connection and bandwidth would be very bad because you can't know if the peer is some guy on the dial up connection. Even in the perfect scenario where everyone had very reliable connection and good bandwidth, the fact that browsers don't support p2p protocol and rely on a hack/workaround to use it, will mean that there will be delays. So starting the video and rewinding would be painfully slow.

Is there something that I'm missing, or is PeerTube really not that much better than a "normal" video hosting server?

This seems like one of the few problems where crypto might actually be useful. It would allow people to automatically and anonymously pay both the creator and the host of that video. Maybe make it a federated system and every host gets paid based on how many Bytes they send. The creator gets a share of that money and the whole system uses something like Monero or whatever. Not sure what the costs of that would be, but I assume its not too outrageous. If it was, YouTube wouldn't be able to exist.

As a PeerTube instance owner, I would say that not everyone needs to join a single instance (that would be the biggest mistake). Instead, if you can self-host one and invite people you like and know, they can provide quality content. Also, having multiple smaller instances makes it easier to moderate and have quality control. Federation and direct subscription to channels also improve instance discovery.

RSS like podcasts. A compressed 1080p video is totally doable over most Internet.

Lobby your government to nationalize it. Anything that important can't be left to private industry.

If you're a creator, upload to Peertube and Youtube, and promote Peertube on your Youtube channel. It's a compromise, but it's the only realistic way to pull viewers over if you're not already a popular creator. Also provide some incentives to use Peertube instead of Youtube, like early uploads.

If you're a viewer, use Peertube; and when you need to use Youtube, use a 3rd party client like pipe-viewer. Don't support ad culture, donate to creators you like instead.

Proton as a private alternative to Gmail

lol, lmao

I don't have solution for videos, but I am moving back to podcasts and rss as much as possible. I want to be ready when they finally forbbid watching without ads.

But I must admit content creators are not helping, content for most of them become just job to be done with. I am aware it is not their fault and that yt is pushing them, but content is geting worse.

It is hard to compete with platform that is loosing so much money. They will also buy anyone who tries. Maybe if we start being satisfied with one resolution and quality, but that will never happen.

I have thought about creating a video series that is distributed via torrent, that could be a decent idea...

Element isn't replacing shit. I hate Matrix

for 3d printed gun people (not personally one of them, just browsed their subreddit once), they use some vaguely blockchain crypto related p2p video host called LBRY, not sure if that model is scalable though, as it seems to be based around free p2p hosting like torrents, although there was some mention of hosting fees, presumably in crypto? not sure

you offer content creators a better revenue share to make content for the new service while offering the same level of stability. there's a reason why nobody has done it.

People use YouTube because YouTube pays them. You want to get paid without a middleman; you have to use cryptocurrency. The Fediverse hates crypto, so the Fediverse will never have a YouTube replacement.