Bonum Certa Men Certa

There's No Free Lunch in Video Hosting

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 09, 2024

Video hosting done correctly:

GNU's TEDx talk

SO the latest political campaign of Daniel Pocock (the Irish General Election in November) has kicked off. We may write more about it in the weekend or next week. That has already led us to some fruitful discussion about censorship-resistant and latency-free (or minimal latency) video hosting. Having done video and audio for quite some time in this site (that mostly started in 2010 with TechBytes), I inevitably became familiar with pros and cons of various forms of self-hosting and outsourcing, e.g. YouTube.

Pocock asked me about video hosting. "One of the challenges from last time is video hosting," he explained. "I want to make sure the videos play smoothly. People can wait a few seconds for pictures to load in a blog but they become irritated if videos are stuttering."

As readers are aware, we self-host everything (even old episodes of TechBytes). The Free Software Foundation (FSF) outsourced to a third party as the primary node of PeerTube and some years ago Debian gave money to PeerTube (which is funny because Debian also takes a lot of money of YouTube's Google, i.e. competitor of PeerTube). Debian tries to silence Pocock because of things he knows as a former insider of Debian (his first contributions to Debian date back to the 1990s).

I personally tried all sorts of things, including PeerTube (I know its limitations), and the FSF uses MediaGoblin for the most part (it is AGPL-licensed software and it has dependencies). The GNU Project is self-hosting many of its videos, i.e. more or less the same as us. No dependencies necessary; just serve the raw file/s.

"Do you have any insights on hosting the video content in a way that is respectful of privacy and freedom," Pocock asked, "e.g. not on YouTube?"

"Maybe I will use IPFS for the video," he said. He did this in the past and I told him that "IPFS is not good for videos, there is latency in lookup (can take minutes). PeerTube might be OK if you host it from a datacentre (like blender3d), maybe even mediagoblin."

An associate of ours asked: "What about seeding a torrent in addition?"

Well, torrents are similar to IPFS. They work similarly, more so P2P-type protocols. Availability isn't assured and latency can be high.

Aside from performance concerns, there's always the aspect of censorship.

"Hosting in a data center still requires a reliable ISP," Pocock said. "Do you think your ISP would host videos reliably and without bucking to pressure? The campaign won't include any content that you haven't already seen."

Webosts and ISPs sometimes play a role in censorship and that's perhaps a subject for us to explore and cover some other time (or year). We've never censored a video or were asked to take a video down. If one relies on something like YouTube or even Mastodon (it's not much better than most Social Control Media), censorship will be routine and frequent. With PeerTube it's harder to censor and the LBRY-type things likewise. However, generally speaking, self-hosting one's videos seem like the best way, even if storage and traffic aren't cheap, especially 'at scale'. Then again, they say there's no free lunch; if you aren't paying for hosting and serving of "your" videos, you're not the customer and those videos, once uploaded, aren't quite yours anymore.

there's no (such thing as a) free lunch

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM is Rotting With "Zero Internal Jobs" and Many PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans) on the Way, Typically a Fast Track Towards Layoffs Without Severance
At risk of giving air(time) to tribal sentiments, the internal joke at IBM is that to IBM "AI" stands for "All Indian"
The Gerstnerisation of Microsoft: Seventh Wave of Microsoft Layoffs (Over 20,000 to be Cut) Allegedly Going to Start Shortly, Probably Start of Next Week, Microsoft Spreads Chaff and Noise Before the Big Axes Fall
we might be looking at about 50,000 people that Microsoft gets rid of this year
GNU (and the FSF) Still Changing the World
Today, in 2025, GNU powers almost everything
Military-Grade Anti-Linux Microsoft Propaganda Using Microsoft LLMs in Fake 'News' Sites (Slopfarms)
This is part of a pattern
 
Rust Propaganda Now Amplified by Slopfarms Powered by Microsoft LLMs, Encouraging the Outsourcing of GNU/Linux Distros to Microsoft/GitHub/NSA (and a Shift Away From GPL/Copyleft)
Moving to Microsoft GitHub and adopting unfinished, untested code for highly critical bits
Links 09/05/2025: Inflation Rising and Rights to Protest Curtailed Some More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/05/2025: Good and Evil, LLMs Made the Web Worse Yet Again
Links for the day
European Patent Office (EPO) Faked "Revenue Expansion" by Granting Loads of Invalid, Illegal Patents; Staff Still Wants to Know Where That Money Went
Only about 30% of the EPO's patents are for EU entities/people
Links 09/05/2025: TeleMessage Blunder, More Distractions From Impending Mass Layoffs at Microsoft
Links for the day
Links 09/05/2025: Analog Computer and First time at FOSDEM
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 08, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 08, 2025
Links 08/05/2025: Mass Layoffs at Google Again, India/Pakistan Tensions Continue to Grow, New Pope (US) Selected
Links for the day
"Victory Day" - Part I: That is the Day Microsofters Who Assault Women Pay for Their Actions in Foreign Land (Using "Guns for Hire" Who Attack Their Own Country for American Dollars)
Adding a friend from Microsoft to the docket didn't help
Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
Gemini Links 08/05/2025: Practical Gemini Use Case, Shutdown of the Blanket Fort Webring
Links for the day
Links 08/05/2025: "Slop Presidency", US Government Defunds Public Broadcasting
Links for the day
Lasse Fister, Organiser of Libre Graphics Meeting, Points Out the Code of Conduct is Likely Violated by the Same People Who Promote Codes of Conduct (and Then Bully Him Into Cancelling a Keynote)
I am starting to see Lasse Fister as another victim
LLM Slop Attacks Not Only Sites of Free Software Projects But Also Bug Reporting Systems (Time-wasting, in Effect "DDoS")
Microsoft, the leading purveyor and promoter of slop, is a cancer
The Richard Stallman (RMS) "European Tour" Carries on In Spite of the Nuremberg Incident
Some people spoke about how they saw yesterday's talk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 07, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 07, 2025
The CoC Means the Founder of GNU/Linux Cannot Talk and a 72-Year-Old Man With Cancer is Somehow a "Safety" Risk?
Those who don't like RMS are not forced to attend his talks
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: A Shopping Spree and Digital Gardening
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: Pegasus Guilty and a Path Towards EU Without Russian Energy
Links for the day
People Used to Talk
If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers
Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025