this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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What international alternatives exist for YouTube? And I understand RedNote as an alternative for TikTok, but YouTube fills a little bit of a different niche.
Peertube is the obvious candidate, but I'm not sold on the content.
I use nebula.tv, many of the creators I like are there too. You pay somerhing, but their business model is not too bad imho.
Floatplane is somewhat similar, but LMG is involved, which I don't love.
What's wrong with LMG?
Linus media group
The closest, at least outside of China, would be Dailymotion.
Allas, if you want to stay away from YouTube, you'll also want to stay away from Dailymotion. This platform is owned by Vincent Bolloré who is also the owner of the "Groupe Canal" (which includes "CNews", the french equivalent to Fox News) and a number of different far-right media. Moving to Dailymotion is not exacly what I would call a smart one.
feel like thats specific to pirated media. i remember i watch pirated shows on there all the time.
No one wants to talk about PeerTube?
/c/peertube@lemmy.world
There's a couple Lemmy communies out there where we showcase different channels.
https://lemmy.world/c/peertube
Check out top for a decent selection. It's a somewhat new community but we are growing fast. It's federated and has some hidden gems from people. Has a very early YouTube feel.
Because the user experience is horrible for non-creators.
True.
Peertube has been hamstrung by a very poorly-made design decision early on.
It's my understanding that peertube copies all of the content from hosts it federates with. That's a huge waste of storage and the main reason why most peertube instances hardly federate with anything.
Instead, peertube developers should implement the option for servers to duplicate data, or simply load the data through a link to a server that hosts it.
It's still young and they've done a pretty good job with everything except this fundamental flaw. Hopefully if enough people hear about this idea and promote it, we can see it implemented and then Peertube can really take off.
That's optional. You have to opt in to mirror a server.
I don't think that's true.
It's my understanding that by federating, you are duplicating the data from the servers you federate with on your own.
The server itself has the option to turn that off or on. And most dont turn that on. Its off by default.
Source: I host a peertube instance.
Does this mean users won't be able to see videos hosted on other platforms from your instance?
Thats a good question.
Users are still able to see their videos, it just does not create a local copy unless you enable that on your server. Its just a pass-though.
EX:
You can see that more clearly here:
And here is my subscriptions (looks and functions identical to Youtubes subscriptions):
But the videos are on their respective servers.
Federation still occurs (and admins can be very specific if they want):
Hope that makes sense!
You might want to look more into how peertube works then.
User experience can be improved pretty easily.
The important parts are already there.
Easier said than done. Reason after all these years it still hasn't been addressed.
I really don't think it is.
As an engineer with almost 2 decades of experience (including streaming sites)... It is.
Well, we'd have to be more specific about what parts of the "user experience" we're talking about here in order to make that assessment.
I'm mostly talking about discoverability, the default algorithms, the lack of federation, and a way to actually filter content by language.
I don't think it's possible for PeerTube to scale to a size where it would be capable of competing with Youtube.
PeerTube is just software. It's a decentralized network. It doesn't have to scale to that size. You can have a million servers handling the storage and streaming in a more efficient method and democratize the bandwidth.
Who's paying to run a million servers?
Same people that pay for lemmy. Us.
It doesn't take much to host peertube TBH. And with each peertube instance, the videos get easier to host. It scales very well with the current iteration of software.
The two biggest issues are actually not software related:
Im pretty happy with what it does NOW. I like the ability to post my videos and get comments without getting flagged for whatever on Youtube. I like my friends and family (and sometimes us weirdos) looking at my videos. And I like the slow trickle of people hosting their videos on say makertube, peertube.wtf, and other such platforms. They seem like really fun individuals and im having a blast.
I disagree, the biggest issues are related to discoverability, and most certainly software-related.
Not necessarily. They only need to agree to allow an instance to mirror their content, and possibly one day contribute something to it in the event that it becomes popular enough. For now, consent is really all that's required. The only revenue they're missing out on is AdSense.
Patreon is one of many different ways to generate revenue. Most popular Youtubers are diversifying in various ways. The most effective of which is creating their own products and using their channels to promote them. Affiliate links/codes is another way smaller creators can diversify.
As always, with freedom comes abuse. Youtube has a lot of regulations that can be cumbersome but also can protect creators and users.
Hosts and users who want their stuff available to their audience without YouTube's bullshit.
Wrong.
There really isn't one. That's why they feel that they can do whatever they feel like. They have no real competition for the type of service they offer.