If your goal is to actually make a point or argument: make it. Don’t just tell people to read a manifesto until they agree with you.

I mean… that is kind of what happens with a lot of these projects.

As they get larger you get more and more of those obnoxious jerks who will close ANY issue if it even slightly is related to something in the past or isn’t formatted correctly and so forth.

Personally? I am a firm believer in working with (actual) users to make things better. But I have definitely had weeks where it is just “Yup. We got mentioned by Youtuber X again” and we more or less ignore any issue not made by an established contributor.

Partially addressed in the other branch but:

Issues from people who can’t even be bothered to make a burner account are almost never useful. And issue tracking that is not fed directly to passionate people who care about maintaining a project is worse than worthless.

That’s what signed commits are for

Then it is a good thing I addressed the existence of those. And… those also more or less need a semi-centralized source of truth that is independent of gitlab/hub/whatever.

Also, pull/merge requests and issues are sent to the origin instance, just like in the fediverse

So everything would still happen on the single source of truth for an a project? But you can have an account on whatever service you want?

Homie? You just described oauth.

As one of the core contributors for even a moderately sized project on Github: HELL NO.

We already get more than enough drive by spam from everyone who just makes an account to complain that our code doesn’t do something we never said it did. And if they don’t even have to do that? Ugh.

I do firmly believe that more projects need to understand the implications of where they host something (similar to the IOS app that alerts you if ICE is in your area). But if someone can’t be bothered to even use a throaway protonmail address to file a bug report or feature request? Quite frankly, what they have to say wouldn’t have been worth our limited time anyway.

For those who were out of the loop:

What exactly is the idea of federated gitlab? Git is already inherently distributed and automagically mirroring to other remotes is generally like three lines in any CI syntax (and there is probably a precommit hook for it too).

Also: I can see a LOT of security issues with not having a centralized source of truth on what the commit hashes should be and so forth. is fedgit dot zip the source of truth for this app or fedgit dot ml or fedgit dot ca? Theoretically that is where signing comes into play but that gets back to: What advantage does a “fediverse” frontend have?

What you are describing is less a throuple and more just bog standard Ethical Non-Monogamy with shades of Polygamy. It would be your wife with multiple partners and you making the proverbial (sometimes literal) sandwich.

I emphasize that because there is a lot of media and societal pressure on all sides. ENM has increasingly become divided on gender lines with (cishet) men having been taught by the tates and the manosphere that it is taking THEIR women away from them and ruining THEIR women forever and so forth. Whereas women (and the lgbtq community) have almost flocked to it in a similar manner to “free love” back in the day as there is an increasing push to not actually have kids… at which point monogamous sex starts to make a lot less sense. Also it is a “good” way to justify splitting a two bedroom apartment’s rent six ways.

Whereas throuples are often romanticized. In large part because people watched/read the trainwreck that was Twilight and all came to the realization that “she got two hands…”.

At the end of the day? Every person and every relationship is different and it is really on you, your partner, and your friend to decide what works for you.

For what its worth? Some very good friends of mine are in an ENM relationship and I’ve had a relationship in the past where we also weren’t exclusive sexually. But the ground rule we, and they, use is that they have one emotional partner. Sex is fun and harmless (if you use protection). I broke up with my ex but for completely unrelated reasons and said friends are perfectly happy as far as I can tell. Emotional bonds are where things get REALLY messy. I’ve always avoided it but every couple I’ve known that tried it fell apart within a year or two. Whether that is good or bad really depends on your life experiences and where you draw the line on “save the relationship” and “live your lives”.

So, personally? If you and your partner want to try this I would suggest NOT banging the dude you clearly both already have emotional connections with. But, again, you do you.

I don’t use jellyfin but my general approach is either:

1. Expose it over a VPN only. I usually use Tailscale for this so that I can expose individual machines but you do you
2. Cloudflare tunnel that exposes a single port on a single internal machine to a subdomain I own

There are obviously ways to do this all on your own but… if you are asking this question you probably want to use one of those to roll it. Because you can leave yourself ridiculously vulnerable if you do it yourself.

And if you live as close to a Best Buy as it sounds, both would likely just be same day delivery on their end. Just a question of when they box up your order.

For anything but same day? It isn’t

For a same day delivery? It is the cheapest courier service out there since the gig economy is all about pushing every expense onto the workers.

I think the basic issue is that you seem to have the maximalist goal of wanting PeerTube to be at similar numbers to YouTube, and missing that, you don’t see anyone finding worth in it - so I will argue against that point, hoping I did not misread you there.

No, my point is that there is no reason for a Content Creator to actually put effort into Peertube (or even the youtube alternatives that they aren’t co-owners of). And there is no path toward that.

For the same reason many thousands of people can download 4k movies and shows concurrently via torrents with just a few dedicated seedboxes

People run seedboxes because they get something out of it: Private tracker access.

You apparently are happy to donate your bandwidth. Good for you. I suspect you would think otherwise when a video “goes viral” and you suddenly get a call from your ISP telling you they have decided you are hosting a business and that you need to pay for a different internet plan. PLENTY of people learned this the fun way back in the 90s/00s.

The real costly part is storage, bandwidth is surprisingly affordable considering the project we are talking about

In the context of file hosting, “bandwidth” is usually used as a catch all for both the raw bandwidth of a single node AND the requirements of a CDN. Otherwise that server gets hugged to death, everyone is angry, blah blah blah. Again, this is a lesson we learned in the 00s.

he influx in audience a “big creator” could mean to an instance, as well as with it potential support in donations both directly and indirecty, could very well outweigh the addional costs

Ah, so now content creators are working specifically to support Peertube. Which means their effective operating costs have just skyrocketed because now they are paying for their own hosting AND paying for all the time and materials to make the video in the first place.

Which is WHY Youtube became so massive. Paying for your own hosting is REALLY expensive and tears into already thin margins for the vast majority of Content Creators.

I’m assuming I missed a valid scandal here that led to closing of an instance, but - Lemmy (and PieFed, and mBin) is very much alive and we are discussing on i

This board is on the dot world instance. Back when Luigi allegedly popped that guy, dot world was leading the charge in terms of complete nonsense CYAs to protect the instance from getting a knock from the FBI equivalent. Similarly, I have my account on the dot zip instance and we have very weird rules regarding the UK because of their data privacy laws.

Or, to be an old again: Every even semi-public FTP server goes the same way. Everything is great. Then you suddenly realize that porn has appeared out of nowhere. And, best case scenario, it is the kind of porn that gets people arrested (because it can get SO much worse…). The same issue came up with file sharing back in the day. And it is why a lot of lemmy/mastodon instances have very specific rules regarding image hosting and NSFW content.

It is great you have had a good experience. Others won’t and will rapidly realize just what they are doinating their bandwidth to.

And audience-wise, it already is a fitting niche for people you disregarded

Great. I didn’t “disregard” anyone. But you have to understand that You Don’t Matter. Because all those things that you (and I) hate about modern video content? That is done to make money.

Google are constantly running analytics to figure out what length of video is most profitable for them in terms of storage, bandwidth, and monetizability. Content Creators are constantly figuring out what Google wants to get a video promoted to the front page AND what will make people not only click that video on the front page but also keep watching so that they can get the metrics that get them those sponsorships.

And its great that you and the people who like Peertube don’t care about that. But that gets back to the same exact point I have been making the entire time: if creating content for a platform can’t even meaningfully offset the cost of creating that content in the first place, the VAST majority of people won’t and you are basically left with the independently wealthy people.

Already mentioned it elsewhere in the thread but this is a story as old as history itself. Creating art costs money. Canvas and paint costs money. Having the time to stay another day to look at that landscape for just a bit longer costs money.

Having a good camera and mic costs money. Having the newest fanciest cell phone with the auto stabilizer so you don’t need a rig costs money. Having the time to learn and use that video editing software costs money. Having the time to keep your head clear enough to really do a solid edit costs money.

And same with the Maker Youtube style content or even the DIY content. Having that second CO2 canister to do another run? Or even just having a piece of wood and a clamp so you can show how that dishwasher airgap actually works without needing to try to angle a camera into a tight corner.

Hell… being able to Go To The Zoo on a less popular day? Guess what that costs?

And taht is the fundamental issue. Yes, there will be people who make content and some of it will be genuinely awesome. But there is also a pretty massive ceiling that will basically mean only independently wealthy people have the time and resources to do a “good video”. And… we kind of actually saw that in the early days of youtube where a LOT of the old hats are from rich families or have cash from their startup being bought and so forth.

What peertube (and basically all the youtube alternatives) lack is any way to move on from that.

To reiterate and expand: The life cycle of a successful youtuber (or twitch streamer or whatever) is:

1. Create content at severe personal cost
2. Qualify for ad revenue. Offset some of that cost but still require a day job. Gauge popularity based on ad revenue
3. Qualify for a referral link for online retailers. Actually make genuinely good money that can potentially lead to this becoming a full time job. Well, not so much after the honey nonsense is likely going to make all this go away but…
4. Qualify for sponsorships at decent rates. THIS is where things can reasonably become a full time job and you can start making true Art rather than fitting a build in between your normal job
5. Get popular enough that you can get enough of a following that people actually WILL “just put some money in the tip jar”

Peertube et al only really exist starting on step 4 (because you can bet most instance owners would strip or hijack those referral links…). And… no company people will want to deal with is going to be sponsoring content that goes to a fraction of the audience that is also predisposed to consider any form of marketing or capitalism a personal insult.

Which basically leaves 5. Which… we are already seeing. linus media group LOVES to pretend Floatplane (which might actually use Peertube under the hood, I forget) is some mega successful business. But he still does youtube content front and center and Floatplane mostly exists for him to profit off a few other youtubers and to encourage his rabid fanbase to give him more money. And there will likely be other creators who decide to “support Peertube” while still primarily making Youtube content. And… they will just crash the ecosystem while getting nerd/FOSS cred.

Yes. Discoverability is the real key. Which also is not at all addressed on peertube and, as I mentioned above, mostly still comes from youtube for the creators who have branched out to other platforms.

A Michael Reeves can get away with just having a kofi and making massive bank because of how big he has gotten… from youtube. Whereas even a Not An Engineer has a channel that lives or dies by collabs and shoutouts from other youtubers (I do suspect he has an independent source of income though).

Also… you put even Not An Engineer on your peertube instance and he is going to consume a disproportionate amount of bandwidth. Let alone a Michael Reeves who would crash the entire fediverse during his annual video.

What you are describing is “if you build it, they will come”. Which is patently false. Ad revenue gets worse and worse every year but it usually is essential to even offsetting parts and labor for a video for smaller creators. I think it was Gamers Nexus that discussed the different tiers of monetization in the context of the honey scandal, but the basic idea is that ads are what let you know if a channel has any legs and referral links are what keep you alive until you are big enough for a sponsor to care.

Which… is also the issue. The kind of sponsors who would fund a peertube video (and just look around at how fediverse folk view ANY form of monetization of the content they consume…) are going to be more bluechew than not, if you catch my drift. And they aren’t going to pay much.

Which gets back to: Peertube as a concept is great for official tutorials and MAYBE blog posts by “nobodies”. Why would anyone go out of their way to join in decentralized hosting of that? And while it is conceptually a great way to “can’t stop the signal” an important video… it either rapidly becomes liveleaks or we see the same thing that happened with Lemmy where the instance owners get a phone call from their local FBI equivalent and rapidly say “I don’t want that smoke”.

But Peertube as something people would even want to browse or create Content for? I have yet to see any path toward that that isn’t “Well, people really love the ideologies of FOSS so they’ll do it out of the goodness of their heart”

And good for you.

But it is the fundamental issue with art. Art needs funding whether that is a patron or a tip jar or whatever. Canvas and paint costs money. Being able to spend an extra afternoon looking at a landscape costs money. Having time to edit and revise your script costs money. And so forth.

And same for youtube. It is the difference between being able to “get it right” versus just using the footage you have and “making it work”. Hell, I love videos that explain how to do basic repairs that I should have learned long ago. And having the money to set up a free standing pipe or cut a bathtub spout in half works a lot better than trying to hold a camera to record yourself replacing a dishwasher airgap and not actually capturing where the clips were.

The issue with “Algorithms” is that you need a lot of data to generate recommendations… which tends to mean centralized (or a LOT of data scraping).

Which is why stuff like Nebula and Floatplane and Ian McCollum’s latest “apolitical” side hustle all are still 100% dependent on Youtube. Hell… I actually still subscribe to Legal Eagle and NileRed on Youtube so that I know when they have a new Nebula video.

And just to be clear: None of the above (including Peertube in general) is competing with Youtube. Well, Floatplane says it is but that is because linus sebastien is a dipshit con man. But it still speaks to the fundamental issue of where Content comes from and what it takes to have the time and resources to do a “good” video.

The problem is that it is just a fundamentally un-profitable platform for creators. Ads don’t work (… period but also) because of the decentralized nature of it. Any instance/frontend that added ads would be shunned in favor of those who don’t. And any video hosted only on a single “instance” would rapidly cost way too much if it ever became moderately popular.

Which means there is no reason for Content Creators to… care. So the best it can ever get is “early youtube”. And people SAY they want early youtube videos but everyone is deeply spoiled by the difference between a video that was made in a week of after work tweaking versus weeks of full time planning and editing.

Which is why peertube in general is one of the “fediverse” products that… I feel really weird about. I forget if Floatplane/Weapons of Guntube/whatever use it or something they rolled themselves, but this really feels like the kind of software project that has the end state of getting “adopted” by a corporation and the major devs hired on as consultants.

Like, twitter (mastodon), reddit (lemmy), and even instagram (??) make sense to me and are very conducive to self hosting since… they are message boards and that is how we used to roll. But video is expensive and hard AND needs incentives to create “good” content for it.

If you are capable of setting up your own personal VPN, you don’t need Tailscale. You still may want to use it though, depending on how much of a novelty Network Fun is for you in your spare time.

For me, the main advantage to Tailscale et al is that it is on a per device basis. So I can access my SMB shares or Frigate setup remotely while still keeping the rest of my internal network isolated( to the degree I trust the software and network setup). You CAN accomplish that with some fancy firewall rules and vlanning but… yeah.

In fairness, this is a dot ml board so 404 might get banned for completely different reasons.

… Have you tried? Been a minute since I signed up for my free “account” but I want to say the only requirement was that the email is a real one because you’ll be sent an auth link whenever you login. No identification beyond that unless I choose to pay.

So… if you are truly concerned then use a VPN and a free email service every time you want to read this or any other independent media sites that use the same model?

You know what an even bigger barrier is? Not existing.

Independent journalism is good. 404 is REALLY good (it comes out of all the best parts of Vice’s tech reporting). They have a very small barrier that basically exists solely to fight bots as a mixture of reducing traffic load (keeping costs down) and encouraging people to actually consider supporting said independent journalism.

Instead we have chucklefucks immediately wanting to remove that paywall or outright accusing them of abusing SEO and data scraping and all that. And these are the same people who will then get mad when EVERYTHING is AI slop.

And this ties in directly to what right wingers want in terms of making the populace even stupider and more uninformed.

This is literally why these sites have the free paywall. Some get bypased. In this case, I suspect 404 gave archive dot org access because they rely so heavily on that site for researching articles.

But. Regardless: if you think a journalism outlet is so evil and are scamming everyone… Maybe just ignore them because you clearly don’t think they are worth your time.

Also: republican love people like you who do everything possible to attack independent journalism.

Which is also a wall between bots scraping the articles.

Support independent media.