YouTube's dramatic content gatekeeping decisions of late have a long history behind them, and there's an equally long history of these defenses being bypassed.

From the article: “In some ways, the current situation has spurred an arms race. YouTube has inadvertently improved ad blockers, as the new knowledge and techniques gained from innovating within the YouTube platform are also applicable to other ad and tracking systems.”

  • Hirom@beehaw.org
    6·
    1 year ago

    YouTube does have the advantage of scale, I wouldn’t expect a federated solution to match their condition, but I’m hoping it can become good-enought as an alternative.

    PeerTube isn’t going to provide a solution, they explicitly state this in their FAQ. But there’s no reason why other platform couldn’t handle monetization AND federate through AgtivityPub (or its successor). If Nebula or Patreon wanted, they could join the federation and make some videos accessible this way. The one holdout would be video that are only accessible to paid subscribers, they wouldn’t make them freely accessible via a federation.

    From the PeerTube FAQ:

    the uploader can display a support button under the video […]

    We did not go any further, as we refuse to tie our code to a particular content funding method, that might not fit all communities and deter others. It’s the reason why we encourage developers to use the PeerTube plugin API to create their own monetization system.

    • HobbitFoot English
      2·
      1 year ago

      None of the three items I mentioned involved scale. Two of them mentioned cost to host and one mentioned advertising the creators’ work.

      The CEO of Nebula has explicitly stated he isn’t creating a YouTube competitor. Nebula has a paywall which is important to its business model. It could never afford self hosting for free.

      Even if PeerTube solves the hosting cost problem, you still have two advantages that a YouTube like system has over a PeerTube like system.