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Corporate media platforms are a mental prison

I’m old enough to remember the days when people were beginning to recognize that putting all our video hosting eggs into the YouTube basket was a bad idea. People were just starting to realize that a single corporation having control over a huge portion of the Internet’s cultural history is a dead end. During this time many platforms spawned branding themselves as a better ‘YouTube Alternative’, only to struggle with little to no actual reach to the general public. Eventually people began to recognize that was truly needed was a “Decentralized YouTube” that could let everyone be in control of their own video platform.

In hindsight, even the very few people who are willing to escape Google’s walled-garden will actually venture away from corporate platforms. Since the beginning, I was skeptical that increasing the amount of corporations hosting the Internet’s video culture going from 1 to a dozen is itself a radical democratization of the information landscape. If anything, this shift has merely been an adaptation of the corporate media control system to dominate (and elevate) particular content niches.

The major competitors to YouTube are just that, competing at the same game. They are not truly any more interested in giving their audience a voice than Google is. While sincere attempts can begin with good intentions, the problem is that you can not dethrone Google without becoming Google. In fact Google couldn’t even be what it was without turning on their own stated principle of “Don’t be evil”.

Corporate video platforms are always going to need to use the finite space in their audience’s attention to market to them, this is why almost every ‘YouTube alternative’ has the same ‘featured page’ that I once remembered to be criticized as even YouTube going too far to push editorialized content on the public.

This is why there is such a radical distinction between the so-called ‘alternative media’ and actually independent voices. While Rumble tries to brand itself as an improvement to YouTube’s draconian speech crackdowns, it seems that it comes at the price of being inundated with advertising for sketchy supplement pushers, and dubious investment schemes. It’s worth noting that if you pay for the privilege, X now gives you the opportunity to serve non-trivial video content on that platform.

It seems that many have successfully escaped YouTube, but not corporate control over online expression. As they say “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”. The new paradigm is fundamentally the same as the old paradigm, just managed by a cartel instead of a single corporate entity. As far as I’m concerned the difference is negligible.

Many solutions, hardly any coordination

One advantage of time passing alone is that the three primary resources in cyberspace are much more inexpensive than in the past. The cost to store a personal collection of video at reasonable quality, and serve it over the web is constantly falling. One could argue we don’t even need a decentralized “YouTube alternative” because the open web is already well-equipped to address this. Thanks to HTML5 video is a first-class content form on the web that has many features. Many content management systems like Ghost or WordPress can include local videos on your sites, and static site generators are also perfectly able to include videos on even small sites. The simple fact is that the web doesn’t even really need centralized video hosts anymore, those willing to reclaim their own territory in cyberspace are able to use a wide variety of tools to serve their own video.

But the root of the issue ends up being reach. Hardly anyone wants to produce media to an audience of nobody. If the intention is to get the word out, or share with others, reach is certainly critical. Again, this is a circumstance that the open web already has a solution for. RSS is a fully decentralized system for media syndication and sharing. If more people fully embraced the open web and even more ambitiously, the social web (AKA the Fediverse) essentially all of the problems caused by corporate media control would be systematically eliminated. The problem is that people have been taught to expect all their online media in one place. The toil of navigating through different websites and apps is a tremendous hurdle for the public to overcome.

We’re always going to have to contend with smartphones as much as we may dread them. Yes, they are a beachhead for corporations to push products and surveillance on the people, but there’s also a reasons why people just can’t put them down. The vast majority of the public for a long period of time is going to be doing the majority of their computing on a smartphone such as an iPhone or Android device. Only the small minority of people who care about reasonable privacy and security guarantees will be running GrapheneOS. Perhaps the Librephone will eventually save us, or the public will mass abandon smartphones all-together, but I don’t anticipate that being anytime soon.

The problem isn’t just media being available, it also needs to be reasonably ‘within reach’ for people’s habits. Convenience is just a derogatory term for user experience innovation. Corporations have had the resources to reasarch, implement and refine, both helpful and dark patterns that shape how people interact with cyberspace. An interesting attempt to address this is Grayjay that aims to provide a “one stop shop” to the entire multimedia landscape of the web. Despite the many criticisms people have with FUTO and the fine details of how they license their software, I think this was a sincere attempt that should be learned from. That said, AntennaPod leverages RSS to effectively do what almost anyone would want out of decentralized media. Just give me a feed so I can watch what I want, when I want. I would go as far as to say that in a truly independent cyberspace, AntennaPod is all anyone would need. But people want more, they want interaction, they want robust discovery mechanisms, and they want an ability to conveniently post media. Thankfully there is such a solution PeerTube.

PeerTube: everything we could ask for

With the way the corporate media dominates the digital information landscape, one would be forgiven for presuming there was no actual solution. While some people may be able to read an entire Libre Solutions Network treatise on the mindset and long journey of making actual change, most people just want a simple solution they can use today to address their problems. Thankfully, that solution is actually here. By running or joining an independent PeerTube instance, you are directly liberating a portion of the online media landscape on behalf of others. With a relatively small investment in time, and resources individuals and communities can directly work to provide a truly better alternative to corporate video platforms.

It is a genuine shame that PeerTube isn’t more popular amongst those who crave a truly independent media. I personally feel responsible for not promoting PeerTube enough, and this piece is a small gesture to atone for that. It is my belief that dissidents across the political spectrum, and even the general public are “sleeping on” what is an immense game-changer when it comes to online media and entertainment. More adoption of PeerTube alone would drastically reduce the harmful impacts of algorithmic manipulation, privacy invasion, and the “dumbing down” of online media as a whole. This likely sounds ’too good to be true’ but the real catch is that we have to want it enough. We need to be willing to invest the effort and resources to build a better digital landscape, rather than wait for it to be provided for us.

A high-quality video CMS

PeerTube is not just a game-changer on the big picture, it’s a technical marvel demonstrating just how different online media can be. The user interface has all the features an ordinary person would expect, but also a lot more enhancements that make it a first-class video repository. Simple things like automatic transcription, compression to multiple different sizes, and even a mobile app are things that can make PeerTube more useful than simply having video files on your web site.

For those interested in running their own instance, PeerTube is an investment in a well-indexed video repository. I wholeheartedly believe that the future of online media and culture looks bright if people seize the opportunity to provide room for creatives and educators to share their work outside the pressures and influences of algorithmic manipulation and opaque monetization. PeerTube also supports a wide variety of ways to customize how your instance looks, so you can truly make it expressive to your needs. As a Free and Open Source (FOSS) project, with the right support, we can only expect PeerTube to get better and better over time. This can’t be said of corporate media platforms.

Structurally solving the actual problems

Love RSS feeds? PeerTube supports them out of the box. You can add any PeerTube channel to your AntenaPod app, or whatever RSS tool you use. But if you want actual engagement, rather than just a one-way conversation PeerTube is a full-fledged member of the Fediverse. This means that any “social web” application can comment on PeerTube videos. Reach both incoming and outgoing is greatly enhanced by this. But if that’s not enough decentralization for you, there’s a reason it’s called “PeerTube”.

PeerTube allows those watching the video to contribute bandwidth to each other. By “sharing the load” this can drastically reduce the bandwidth costs of serving videos in particular circumstances. This doesn’t eliminate all the costs, but is a significant way to “level the playing-field” for smaller operators. In previous versions this was done through WebTorrent but now has switched to WebRTC and HLS. In practice this has some trade-offs but I can definitely defend the change.

In my opinion, the biggest game-changer of PeerTube is that independent operators can finally break free of many of the incentives that fuel the ’enshittification’ of digital media. Without algorithms prioritizing particular video formats and length, people are free to create for quality rather than to publish. This can help work towards a radically different media landscape that lets people drive virality rather than corporate algorithms and government imperatives. It’s a relatively small thing, but PeerTube also features the addition of funding/donation information on a per video and a per channel basis, meaning that what’s possible in the future is unbounded with the right support.

Not seizing this opportunity would be a BIG mistake

Many of us lament the ’tik-tok’ brain and lack of attention span of the youth, if not the general public at large. But can we truly say we tried everything to ensure they inherit a better media landscape? Do we not have the responsibility to foster a culture that provides real meaningful alternatives to corporate slop? It is easy to critique others choices to validate our own decisions. I believe it is a duty of the modern person to proactively support building independent culture and its preservation. That said, we must also contend with the constraints and realities of our time. Because of this and all the above, I believe that PeerTube is an indispensable tool for building a better digital future. The sad fact of the matter is that many people are just waiting for cyberspace to become less hostile and predatory, but it falls to all of us to do what we can to change it.

I have been pleasantly surprised that even my relatively obscure project The Libre Solutions Network, gets a non-trivial amount of views via my own PeerTube Instance. When I compare view stats against the SubStack publication with over 1000 people signed-up, I am genuinely impressed that those following my projects over the open web will hit comparable watch time. What this tells me is that while you will certainly get higher surface engagement numbers on larger platforms, deep meaningful engagement is only to be found on the open web. Fostering a better digital culture requires us to make decisions with this in mind, and align our efforts accordingly.

This is fundamentally a collective action problem, not a technical one. Corporate media is entrenched because of massive network effects, but this is far from insurmountable. In a time where the plan seems to be trading the spark of human expression and creativity for regurgitated AI slop, quality and meaning are at a massive premium. The public is starved for authentic cultural expression and representation and there is so much potential in the tools we have to provide that. PeerTube is a real chance for us to experience something better than YouTube and its competitors ever could have been.

If you can, please donate to support the project!

How to get started

Go to the website and learn more about PeerTube.

PeerTube channels to consider

You can already start using PeerTube today by checking out these channels. You can bookmark them, use the app, or their subscribe via their feed.

• (My project) Libre Solutions Network
• Retro Edge Tech
• (RTP) Privacy & Tech Tips
• GadgeteerZa
• Privacy International - Podcasts
• Nephitejnf
• Linux Renaissance

Want me to include your channel? Send me a follow at @lsn@peertube.libresolutions.network from your channel, and I’ll add you to the list shortly!