this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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I REALLY want there to be a better YT replacement on the fediverse or in some form of decentralized way.
As people are pointing out, videos are very large files, and therefore very expensive to host. The fediverse can mitigate this a little bit, as everyone can host their own videos on their own server, but that's not enough, and extremely inconvenient.
I do wonder if the blockchain/torrents can be used here... I'm not a dev or anything so IDK how any of it really works, but I think something to that tune is gonna be the only way, since traditional servers don't seem to be viable.
In what way? To what effect? It's not like blockchain magically makes videos small.
I did say I don't really know how it works😅... But here's what I was thinking:
My limited understanding is that the blockchain works as a ledger. Basically, a list that can verify or confirm the authenticity and provenance of files. The way it's verified is by doing some very complicated math on some particular numbers with properties that allow for their authenticity to be verified but not forged. People have incentives to do this complicated math (that takes up power, time, money, etc.) because the blockchain rewards them with tokens or coins (which could be used to pay for special services on the platform, for example).
So, yes, the blockchain doesn't make files smaller, but it could work to verify their authenticity, and that they have not been tampered with. That way, anyone can host anyone's videos, but the ledger would guarantee that the video is the "original", as well as information about who first posted it, etc...
So instead of videos being hosted on 1 server, videos could be downloaded and made available by anyone to anyone at any time. The videos aren't smaller, but no 1 server would have more burden than any other, and it would be scalable since the users would host their favourite videos. Like torrenting?
Maybe it's not a useful tool in this case, IDK. It was just an ignorant suggestion really, as I said I'm not a dev and don't actually understand any of this... I just want a better YT.
As with every other suggested use of blockchain, there are already better ways to verify contents. It's called hashing, it's been around for decades, and we do it all the time.
This is going to run into all kinds of bottlenecks. Individual users may have a fast enough Internet connection to stream HD video, but uploading is often much slower. Even if not, one user could only co-host maybe 1-2 other users. Also, ISPs sure aren't going to like all the increased bandwidth!
People always vastly underestimate the bandwidth requirements for smooth, streaming video.
Hmmm :// that really sucks honestly...
and still expensive as hell. Hopefully one of your videos doesn't go slightly viral, or you'll get a pretty huge bill from your VPS. Unless you own the infrastructure, you're paying a huge penny to host video.
Linus from LTT talked about it when it comes to FloatPlane. How stupidly expensive it is to host video.
yeah some system like a torrent could solve this issue
You are right about torrents. Blockchains could be useful, but indirectly. For instance, Filecoin is a marketplace for decentralized storage. You can pay 1$ per TB per year, and the amount of storage can scale almost to infinity because as demand increase, price increase, and offer increase
Peertube
Better than nothing for sure though.