Nostr Web Client

To me, that coin-centric approach makes it meh to me. I will still give it a shot to see how well it performs and what the backend looks like when in use (got enough storage to spare for a trial run).

The dangers of someone not keeping their node up 24/7 are inherent with a decentralized approach though; so that one isn't particularily new to me. I mean, if my LN node goes down, its the same effect really.

Oh well... Let's see how deep I can dig before it becomes a full blown nuisance. I will be in hospital from monday onward but have my laptop with me with my VPN configured. Something to do while I sit around, I guess. ^^

Akito 2y ago

No, there's a difference.

The same reasons apply to why I don't like the concept of #Peertube & P2P for large files in general, except #Torrent, because that's historically a different story.

#Peertube advertises itself as censorship-resilient, because it can store videos #decentralised among many peers. However the reality is, that it's simply not in any way economically feasible to just spread huge video amounts by duplicating them on many machines. It does not make any sense, once it passes a certain amount * size threshold.

So, in reality, a #Peertube instance is either de facto a centralised server or a bunch of servers, each having their own videos, but without duplication among several peers. Imagine a #Peertube instance, which does not have any duplication whatsoever, then there would be still way too many videos.

I guess, we could call this the #YouTubeProblem.

The only way to host trillions of videos or even when we are only talking about millions, is if you provide a heavily monetized, centralised service as a huge billion dollar company, like Google & Alphabet.

Otherwise, you will be so far away from #YouTube, just dreaming of replacing it, or offering a valid alternative, would be utterly laughable.

I think, the only way to truly believe in #Peertube is to not fathom how extremely huge #YouTube actually is.

Now, that said, the same applies to any P2P solution for large, hardly compressable files, which *must* serve files.

The reason #Torrent works, is because it is based on popularity. If something is popular, then more will seed. If something loses all popularity, it dies.

Now, with #Torrent, that's natural, but imagine you have a video or large file storage platform, where you *need* those files available.

How do you make sure unpopular content does not die?

Make your own node & provide it in a de facto #centralised way. Now, we return to the beginning...

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Discussion

Ingwie Phoenix (aka. birb) 2y ago

Yep, that is indeed the #YouTubeProblem - and it is going to be a problem for a while, and the reason why YouTube itself will stay relevant for years to come, unfortunately. That said, sometimes I wonder if Google is actually aware of the value they have there... But, that's not the point.

Right now, p2p file sharing and duplication across nodes is unfortunately the best the non-big-company crowd can do - be it torrent, peertube, ipfs, heck even sia. But you pointed out correctly that this also means that unpopular content dies, which is always a shame. However, at the current point, unavoidable. I ran into torrents before with zero seeders for months because it was, well, "unpopular".

Yet, I hope to discover a breakthrough solution at some point which will help these matters - because I believe that "there has to be" one, whilst knowing full well that we are far away from that.

That said, whilst discussing the pros and cons is important, we also have to try and find those new and better solutions. Yes, a big company with the apropriate resources is one way to tackle it - but even there, I don't see anyone "replacing" or let alone competing with Youtube in the forseeable future. Even if Tiktok tried to get into long-form video, I doubt they'll have an easy time (aside from the amount of attention span they already killed over the years in their audience).

This is, even though I am not very fond of what Sia writes and promises, I still want to give it a try - who knows, there might be something useful in there that could potentially be reused.

Whilst IPFS' content addressing isn't perfect since it depends on the chunking settings, it is definitively something I would consider "a good feature". Let's find more of this, combine this, and... maybe we have something good...? x)

Akito 2y ago

Agree.

I'm also not against trying Sia out & I don't "hate" it, in case anyone got that impression.

The reasons I depicted earlier just lead to the conclusion, that my personal interest & motivation to do anything with it is rather low.

I'm all for #decentralisation, but I don't see a point in doing that for random videos, which are not specifically selected to be super important.

I think, even a very tiny #YouTube alternative must be in some way #centralised or else it just won't be feasible.

Actually, this is also the problem I mentioned a couple of times regarding #Nostr.

Theoretically, you could post super long notes here & I have seen some #Nostr providers also providing image hosting.

This does not scale at all, even if notes are the main content. It's not as bad as #Peertube, but how many millions of users can many relays take?

If we just have a couple of really huge relays, the whole point of #Nostr is defeated, since the whole point was, that you should distribute your shit among as many relays as possible, as each one adds up to the amount of #censorship resilience.

Landy 2y ago

Could a Storj type model be one way to minimise issues with decentralised video hosting? Instead of storing the video on many hosts it stored portions

I haven’t used Storj so I don’t know how well it works but I found the idea interesting when I heard it