video hosting & streaming is still insanely expensive unfortunately. mastodon barely works and it's mostly text with the occasional photo and even rarer video, and still instances shut down because they run out of money. This might be one of those problems that is cracked at some impossible-to-define point in ten years when fiber internet is ubiquitous. Hope they manage it but
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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Mastodon is at least a good attempt. Maybe it can portend something later, but I'm tired of waiting.
If someone could create something where the servers only did a bit of work and the user base kept a set couple gigs each of the most recent clips they watch stored on their devices and it was all streamed/shared like a torrent would be to everyone else who was wanting to watch them, it would significantly cut down on costs.
Their wouldn't be any long time storage of old clips for people to go back and find (although at more costs for server/bandwidth it could be, since those clips would be watched much less) but that's not usually what people doomscroll through tik tok for.
But getting a server to just link up videos from thousands of other devices to arrange torrent uploads/downloads of clips could really reduce overhead.
That's basically ipfs I think
I had to look that up, but I'd say yes, a lot like it, but there would probably have to be a bit more legwork from a central server for assigning out upcoming videos for each device. Something that keeps track of trends and stuff instead of just manual requests by the end user.
Yeah, some kind of coordination server, or servers? That sounds like a process that wouldn't necessarily have to be super centralized, maybe it could be just a local thing, "show me what nodes near me are viewing".
I think a problem with this approach is that doomscrolling is biased heavily towards leechers and people who have data quotas (e.g. phones using mobile data). Someone has to foot the bill of serving up all that content, and it probably doesn't make sense that relatively unstable connections like cell phones are serving it. And there's probably also latency costs to worry about too. People aren't going to doomscroll as long if they have to wait 5 seconds between reels.
Most people have unlimited data on phones nowadays, and same for over wifi, so I don't see a bit of upload time capping most people. As to the 5 seconds of buffer time, I was thinking the system would try to keep like the next 20 upcoming videos pre-loaded on your device in order to eliminate that. Not doing it on demand each time you'd swipe.
Honestly might be an interesting way to do a tiktok-like. Video hosting is super expensive if its centralized; it takes up so much space and has to be super compressed. If instead everyone who creates content also ran their own instance, then federated with a big normie instance, it could conceivably work. The creator would host their content forever, the normie instance could host it for a short timespan to boost visibility, then viewers follow the normie instance and any creators that they want to see more of (and have archives of their own videos)
If instead everyone who creates content also ran their own instance
this can't be it, sadly. All of the best content creators on tiktok are not in the position financially or technically to host an instance of anything, let alone configure and maintain it. This is especially true for journalism, politics, and ordinary goofball content, which in my mind are three things tiktok is best at and are critical to its value. There has to be a way for someone with no technical background and no money to share their voice if this is to be "federated tiktok".
true, that is the fundamental flaw of decentralized anything
Journalism: the instance is for the newspaper/radio/TV/... not just one journalist. Politics: party instance.
That reduces the load. And other areas can do the same. A game development company can have one instance for everything and everyone related to the company.
When video maker phone goes to sleep, does the video still exist? - new philosophical questions for the new age.
Until people can make phone accessible (transparent to user) p2p hosting, its unlikely to work
Centralized video hosting is also decentralized and redundant. If something goes viral it will quickly overwhelm a self hosted server.
Doesn't peertube and the like have a torrent protocol so in those cases you're pulling from other users?
I wonder if it will have an algorithmic feed as well as a linear feed of your follows. I get the appeal of TikTok is the algorithm, but I only really want that when I'm trying to discover something new. If I'm already following a lot of stuff, sometimes I just want to see it in the order it was posted.
I love TikTok's algorithm and "discoverability."
Tiktok spoonfeeding me leftist creators with its algorithm during BLM is a huge part of how I became a socialist. It ofc can have the opposite result, but I know for a fact I wouldn't have joined a decentralized platform with no algorithm 5 years ago.
Exactly.
If I could control the parameters I might actually be interested.
I doubt itll take off ngl
Yeah, people who live the majority of their lives offline and mostly use the net for distractions or a means to an end have no ideology on the matter. They go to where the most people are or at least the ones that align with their target audience.
This is very common with people who make stuff to sell and use Instagram/tiktok/etc as their sole marketing platform. Moving their activity to a less active platform (or just adding it to your social account list) can effectively cost them more in time or money that makes it not worth the hassle for them.
And a lot of normal users stick around on these sites because its the only place their favorite artists/vendors/people are. Its a conundrum.
This dev is a hard worker. I don't use Mast a lot but follow him and he's always hustling. I think he might be a lib though but contributing to the federated open source world is aways a good thing imo.
There is also a discord group I'm in that is working on a TT replacement. I sort of hope for the best for both and I'm not a TT user. I just want to see the gov's attempt at reigning in TikTok to use it a their own spyware to straight up fucking crash and burn.
Dansup doesn't really deliver novel tech, but I'm always happy to see the idea getting out there and working out UX ideas at least. Federated video is a tough one. Web p2p tech is extremely limited so don't expect too much. Fedi dev's fixation of web technologies is really holding the platform back imo. Peertube makes bit torrent look bad by not being a complete peer experience, only because browsers can't do real networking. like, I can stream any show I want over bit torrent the day it releases no problem. with over 40 peers for popular content. hosting tiktok-like content could be just as good, but you just can't do this with web.
Sadly, most of the more technical projects have reactionary politics and a blockchain attached.. That's slowly changing, but we have way less funding at our disposal so its rough.
I'm putting my videos on there then.
Interesting