Video download link | md5sum d714ff3563902e5be7aad958ac15506c Videos Without Outsourcing Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: Freedom of expression and long-term preservation (we have some videos here that are older than 15 years) will require self-determination through self-hosting of videos/multimedia files

THE most fundamental thing people must remember is, what Gulag's (Google) or YouTube's platform is today isn't what it'll be tomorrow (or next year or the next decade). Putting one's eggs (work, subscribers) in Gulag's basket/hands is risky and there's no telling if the platform will be online at all some time in the future; the decisions is not users' (yours or others'). The same is true for many of Gulag's competitors, which are smaller and are sometimes perceived as 'underdogs' (there are downsides, not just upsides to it). Putting censorship aspects aside (all such platform won't permit some certain things, e.g. pornography, gory violence), do you wish to be controlled or led to self-censorship through risk/fear of "de-monetisation", delisting, and takedowns? Who are you producing videos for anyway? The Gulag? Is that your boss now? Does it pay you a fixed salary? A pension too?

Over the past few years we studied a number of platforms or options for Git hosting (we chose self-hosting and wrote a front end in Gemini, though only at the very end due to frustration with bloat). Similarly, we tried to study ways to self-host and then present videos, without having to rely on any other party deciding on how to 'rank' the videos and whether such videos meet some arbitrary guidelines (they're arbitrary because they change over time and you must always consent/agree to any subsequent changes).

"...they can and will pull the rug as soon as it is convenient to do so, e.g. a conflict or feud between people on the same platform, sometimes a legal threat too."The video above explains how we use simple HTML (no JavaScript) and Gemini Protocol to organise our videos. We're posting all the code (under AGPLv3), so we hope to inspire others to do the same. The choice ought not be Gulag versus "some other video hosting platform"; it should really be a decision like, do you want to manage your own videos or do you want to outsource everything to some other party? There's no "free lunch". It's a lot like "clown computing" or "social control media"; every decision to offload the material to some other party -- a party with entirely different financial objectives (they don't value your personal views, either) -- is very short-sighted and overall not as cheap as it initially seemed; they can and will pull the rug as soon as it is convenient to do so, e.g. a conflict or feud between people on the same platform, sometimes a legal threat too. ⬆