Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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How do we replace YouTube? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

104 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi, my post is focusing specifically on YouTube since I observed the following categories have less intrusive solutions or privacy focused solutions, even if they are paid:

Operating Systems (Linux, for example)
Instant Messaging (Element, for example)
Community Messaging (Revolt, for example)
E-Mail (Proton, for example)
Office (libreoffice, for example)
Password Managers (Bitwarden, for example)

However, how do we distribute videos and watch them without data collection? I am NOT asking how do I use a privacy-focused front-end for YouTube, by the way, I am aware they exist.

I am wondering how we obtain a FOSS solution to something super critical such as YouTube. It is critical since it contains a lot of educational content (I'd wager more than any other platform), and arguably the most informative platform, despite having to filter through a lot of trash. During COVID, we even saw lecturers from universities upload their content on YouTube and telling students to watch those lectures. (I have first-hand experience with this at a respectable university).

I refuse to accept that there is nothing we can do about it.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I'd have agreed but hundreds of fmovies and similar sites exist on the high seas that provide free streaming of millions of HD content (movies, web series, etc.) somehow. They use some third-party video host that is magically able to concurrently serve millions of people.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

the infrastructure of the pirate streaming sites is impressive, but I bet that is still orders of magnitude easier than hosting youtube.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Those sites just scrape from many different file hosting sites. They don't pay for that storage themselves.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

.. which makes it even more wonderful, since those file hosting sites are now somehow able to serve video streaming to millions of viewers across the world FOR FREE.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Maybe the solution to YouTube is something similar to BitTorrent. It would make more sense for the protocol to preload the first chunk and to use a codec that can start with a lower res image and then fill in the resolution in subsequent passes. And on the front end, something like Lemmy would work, where channels and posts can be federated.

Considering the number of people who have 1gps symmetric bandwidth today, such a system should be able to technically work.

But nobody’s designed it yet AFAIK.