Decentralized Social Media.
I have had my youtube channel for a few years.
One day I discovered that one video about Berlin and the medical system was banned for bullying. I sent a request to youtube, but the video was deleted.
I talk a lot about my sovereign self but realize that I am not following my ideas and use administrative platforms like youtube and Medium — mainly because of the audience, but it is a separate topic.
So I started looking for an alternative decentralized platform for my video blog.
Odysee
First that i found was Odysee
Odysee is built on top of https://lbry.com/
First and foremost, LBRY is a new protocol that allows anyone to build apps that interact with digital content on the LBRY network. Apps built using the protocol allow creators to upload their work to the LBRY network of hosts (like BitTorrent), to set a price per stream or download (like iTunes) or give it away for free (like YouTube without ads). The work you publish could be videos, audio files, documents, or any other type of file.
So it is built on top of blockchain with its currency and tokenomics so you will get rewards for activity and publishing, and you could reward folks directly.
The killer feature is youtube sync — so you just connect your youtube, and all content gets synchronized.
I got too significant concerns —
- LBRY is somehow hosted and owned by the concrete company
- odysee entry point is a centralized website
So it was a good start but not ideal
Fediverce — Peertube, Mastadon
My next stop was a peertube
Peertube is a part of a bigger initiative
It is built around an open social media protocol
The open protocol enables running multiple federated applications and servers that create a federated network.
So you have different hosted community servers with rules, moderation, and preferences that can work with them as a single network.
I decide to use diode.zone for my nerdy videos.
Feature wide the same possibility — you could create multiple channels and do a simple sync configuration with youtube.
The most popular fedivers citizen is Mastodon — a federated alternative to Twitter.
So hear the same concept — join an instance you like and start looking for friends.
I joined fosstodon
NOSTR
One more open Social media protocol that get a lot of intensions and network effect is NOSTR
Nostr is more alternative to Mastodon and Twitter and not designed for video hosting, but it is appealing to me with its ideas and privacy features.
All you need is to generate a private key, and done.
It is decentralized and built on top of Client-Relay architecture.
Critics of mastodonn from nostr team
The problem with Mastodon and similar programs
User identities are attached to domain names controlled by third-parties;
Server owners can ban you, just like Twitter; Server owners can also block other servers;
Migration between servers is an afterthought and can only be accomplished if servers cooperate. It doesn’t work in an adversarial environment (all followers are lost);
There are no clear incentives to run servers, therefore, they tend to be run by enthusiasts and people who want to have their name attached to a cool domain. Then, users are subject to the despotism of a single person, which is often worse than that of a big company like Twitter, and they can’t migrate out;
Since servers tend to be run amateurishly, they are often abandoned after a while — which is effectively the same as banning everybody;
It doesn’t make sense to have a ton of servers if updates from every server will have to be painfully pushed (and saved!) to a ton of other servers. This point is exacerbated by the fact that servers tend to exist in huge numbers, therefore more data has to be passed to more places more often;
For the specific example of video sharing, ActivityPub enthusiasts realized it would be completely impossible to transmit video from server to server the way text notes are, so they decided to keep the video hosted only from the single instance where it was posted to, which is similar to the Nostr approach.
it is interesting
So you can find me on Noster to npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m
Why am I still on Medium and Youtube?
As i mentioned, all decentralized platform is cool and full of freedom you own your content, but …
The biggest problem is the need for adoption and audience. Mostodon is more successful but still far from classical platforms and social media. I deeply belive in a future of desoc but for now, it is at a quite an early stage.
So I use Peertube more as a Plan B for video backup and a possibility to have an alternative platform. For now amount of weekly views is very low
