I want these things to implement peer to peer caching, so that when 10 people are watching the same video, only one downloads from youtubes own servers.
Then it's just a matter of letting people add their own videos directly to the service and it can become fully independent of YouTube.
Peer to peer died because (1) a lot of the world, especially outside the US, has terrible upload/bandwidth, (2) HTTPS CDNs got _really_ cheap, far cheaper that p2p technologies like BitTorrent+WebSeed.
There are a minority of users who care about being able to host videos that violate YouTube/TikTok/Instagram policies. Unfortunately, a significant part of that minority is working with infringing or illegal content, which both prevents ad networks from working with you and attracts attention from law enforcement.
It's much more of a storage space problem and a device running 24/7 problem. With the desktop of yore you can just leave them running and attach cheap HDDs to them for media storage. Nowadays, most people have laptops -- which are explicitly closed for most of the time -- and phones -- which doing 24/7 upload on will kill your battery life. And neither support 3.5" HDDs.
BitTorrent is certainly built around the idea that upload can be slow. Even if user have upload 100x worse than download, 100 seeders can saturate a leacher, and then the leacher becomes a seeder.
The problem is just that he doesn't stay a seeder forever, because of the other problems.
Phones are charging ~8 hours a day whilst you sleep though. And few people mind the phone seeding stuff on your home WiFi whilst charging. Many users could also spare 32gbytes for seed data too, especially if the app was smart and automatically reduced the store size before the phone started to notify you of low storage space.
If a typical user uses preertube 30 mins a day, that still gives a 16 to 1 ratio between seeding and leeching, and a 1024 to 1 data storage to data viewed ratio, meaning there is a good opportunity for a big back catalogue.
londons_explore · · focus · HN ↗
Then it's just a matter of letting people add their own videos directly to the service and it can become fully independent of YouTube.
t2r3121 · · focus · HN ↗
There are a minority of users who care about being able to host videos that violate YouTube/TikTok/Instagram policies. Unfortunately, a significant part of that minority is working with infringing or illegal content, which both prevents ad networks from working with you and attracts attention from law enforcement.
serbuvlad · · focus · HN ↗
BitTorrent is certainly built around the idea that upload can be slow. Even if user have upload 100x worse than download, 100 seeders can saturate a leacher, and then the leacher becomes a seeder.
The problem is just that he doesn't stay a seeder forever, because of the other problems.
londons_explore · · focus · HN ↗
If a typical user uses preertube 30 mins a day, that still gives a 16 to 1 ratio between seeding and leeching, and a 1024 to 1 data storage to data viewed ratio, meaning there is a good opportunity for a big back catalogue.
serbuvlad · · focus · HN ↗
Almost everyone I've ever known has problems with running out of phone storage, so I disagree with this.
The seeding while charging and on wifi idea is cool though.
t0bia_s · · focus · HN ↗
floam · · focus · HN ↗
t2r3121 · · focus · HN ↗