this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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We've had bittorrent for many years.
The issue is creating a global index and dedicating some storage to the less popular (at the moment) data.
One can have paid storage provided over such a network, available only to subscribers. So you want to fetch a video from the global index, there are no peers having it online for free or their upload speed it atrocious, but there are some offering it not for free. You choose them and download, or maybe you have something like trade and auctions automation in MMORPGs - setting for auto-purchase and auto-sale with caps for what you would pay.
That requires a payment system, though, that one can seamlessly connect to identities in such a network.
But even running an indexer on a YT-like scale would need serious money, even if you spread the hosting and streaming load around. And for most users, this would not be attractive, as you probably would have to torrent the data first and view it later.
Then there is the issue with responsibility. If someone throws e.g. CSAM into the system, who could be held responsible? Who would have to deal with DMCA notices? Who would deal with issues like "Dictator X demands all videos showing him in a bad light to be removed immediately!"
And: Opening a payment system is a serious can of worms, especially if you need it to work internationally.
Honestly, I'm not against a YT alternative, but I don't want it to die after three weeks because the person behind is was too optimistic to consider to potential problems.
All this also doesn't take into account how creators gets paid.
It's a big system, with enough moving parts that I understand the ad/pay model existing. I just wish they weren't such prices about how they choose to operate it sometimes.
If they want to make money in such system, they can simply host their node and use something like patreon to get paid.
(yes, there should be the option for a node to not be able to share a video and to stream it only to subscribed users, but that does not seems to be a big problem)