I love the idea, but most servers only host a couple of videos, it’s very hard to find enjoyable content on there and it’s difficult to figure out which server could be a good server to make an account on…

I wouldn’t mind a centralized aggregator of videos and maybe it could have a suggestions algorithm as well or whatever. Not that this would be ideal in the long term but it could help get the videos some views and make more content creators see this as a good alternative. It’s not safe on youtube, people aren’t even saying suicide anymore ffs

Edit: Even some renowned german media have their own peertube servers that they feed with high quality videos, but of course they have basically 0 views. (https://peertube.heise.de/, https://tube.taz.de/)

      • Salamander@mander.xyz
        3·
        5 days ago

        Thanks. I don’t know much about torrenting other, and I never looked into the concept of what Magnet links are.

        It is actually very interesting! Such an elegant and simple solution.

        And I think it is even simpler than what the instructions imply… I can write the following into the terminal:

        transmission-cli "magnet:?xt=urn:btih:563cf8f2a0bdd5564ae9ef3d3302eecef639328b"

        And that’s enough to pull the first episode of alien earth that you shared. That unique hash is all it takes to search for seeders. Very cool.

        It is still not obvious to me who would seed when implementing the torrent-based YouTube alternative. Would it make sense that users set some torrenting ratio, a file lifetime, and a size limit, and ‘collect’ videos as they watch them so that they can seed for other users?

        All that’s needed is for people to learn how to seed their own videos, and post magnet links around.

        I’m in! Looking into it. Now I need to go make something worth sharing.

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
          3·
          5 days ago

          It always surprises me when ppl don’t know about torrents. They were the only way to get things before streaming services privatized all this content, and still remain better, by using the latest encodings and quality formats for media.

          It is still not obvious to me who would seed when implementing the torrent-based YouTube alternative.

          Torrenters generally leave their torrent application open in the background, and seed whatever and however they’d like. Some create rules around how much and how often to seed, either based on ratios, time seeded, or speed limits. Others just seed forever at max. All the modern clients like qbitorrent or deluge can handle this, pausing the torrents when they meet given rules.

          So new content would be no different than the thousands of people seeding existing content.

          • Salamander@mander.xyz
            3·
            5 days ago

            It always surprises me when ppl don’t know about torrents. They were the only way to get things before streaming services privatized all this content, and still remain better, by using the latest encodings and quality formats for media.

            I did know enough about torrents to do practically use them to download things since the Limewire/Ares times. But what I meant is that I never actually knew how they work at a technical level - I never opened a torrent file and looked inside, or knew what a magnet link was. So, then, the topic as a whole is still opaque to me. But I did some reading today and I’m getting into it.

            So new content would be no different than the thousands of people seeding existing content.

            I see it, but I also see why this concept might be intimidating to some. I (and probably many others) make use of torrents in rare occasion when I cannot find a movie, a series, or want an album. I associate torrenting with acquiring a large file for long term storage. Streaming feels different - videos exist in my computer only while I need them, and then they leave no trace. As I understand it, a torrent-based system would actually download all (or some) videos to disk to be able to seed them.

            Still, I do think that a youtube-like torrent-based client would be successful - especially if implemented in a way that is simple for the user. An interface to find content, transparent and adjustable torrent settings with control over disk space allocation, and the torrents/magnet link management mostly hidden from the user.