this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Why do I not find any video/gif content here? (self.asklemmy)
submitted 2 years ago by zerozaku to c/[email protected]
45 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

It's been great 4 days here on fediverse for me. But I started to notice that there is barely any content in form of videos or gifs. Every content is just static in form is images or text. This is what I am really missing here compared to reddit. Is there any particular reason behind it?

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[–] [email protected] 99 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

For now I don't think it makes sense to federate large media like videos. The storage costs are just too high to replicate this data all over the place.

The better model I think is to link to content providers with more traditional approach to providing videos. Lemmy is a link aggregator after all, not a media platform.

TBH, I think this was the downfall of Reddit. Reddit had kind of devolved into a cesspit of reactionary videos. Can't say I miss those, sure it was entertaining, but it forms habits of doom scrolling and at the end of the day, I don't want it if it takes shitty business models to support such a service.

Lemmy should stay focused on what made Reddit famous: being the front page of the internet, and honest, raw commenting system to hear from the people.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Reddit has been slowly descending into becoming yet another Instagram/TikTok clone. You scroll a never ending front page of videos and pictures, and it gets somewhat overwhelming pretty quickly.

I think this might be the necessary distinction that will make this a unique space different from Reddit. The less doomscrolling I can have in my life, the better.

[–] zerozaku 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's true that reddit has got tiktokified but what I want is not that tiktok content. I just want multimedia here on lemmy via any form. Be it from any other instance or embedding media sharing platforms.

Not having videos on fediverse is just plain boring. I always don't want to interact or read text based content all the time. Sometimes I want to scroll and chill on the videos/gifs which can be informative, funny and so on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I think one of the core strenghts of reddit was that you could configure and adapt it so much, two users could basically have completely different experiences while being on the same page. While I don't search for another imgur/tiktok -however you want to call it-, I know how it would have been just a few clicks and maybe settings away on reddit.

I hope federation will allow for a similar individual experience over time. Certainly it shouldn't be the one dominant thing but there will be instances needed that approach the more visual form to allow for that freedom of choice.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

For now I don’t think it makes sense to federate large media like videos. The storage costs are just too high to replicate this data all over the place.

Luckily, media isn't federated but only stored where it was uploaded ^^

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

On Lemmy that is. Kbin I believe replicates everything (unless I set my server up wrong). My server at the moment pulls in around 1.5 GB a day it seems. There is a pull request open on the kbin git repo for a feature to auto-remove old media. Personally I'd like the ability to turn on/off media replication. If an instance wants a complete copy in case of defederation/disconnection somehow, they can opt in and mirror all media that comes in. Most servers should just link to the original image source on the originating instance though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Hm. From what I'm collecting organically, is that while the fediverse is definitely the future, it has some framework designs and philosophy on ....certain issues to really nail out before it can become web 3.0

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I have another cool tip for you. You can embed the graphic into your comment when you use markdown formatting. This way ![](https://media.tenor.com/uC2qyrJsT6wAAAAM/oh-really-o-rly.gif) becomes this:

.

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

I'm on the android chrome kbin app, annnnnd i think you meant to embed that? But lol... For me it's the literal exact same bluetext hotlink

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Oh well, in Lemmy this works fine ^^

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

Are you using a mobile app?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Both, mobile and web app.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Since it sounds like you have auto media preview turned off, just tap that little icon to the left of the link, and you'll see the image load below the link.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Oooooo... Yes that's it. Thank you. That's a good protip. I'm assuming that's a setting that I probably turned off while trying to make the the All page be more compact.

Edit: I don't know where that setting is. It's not in my profile settings.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Here’s where you go to do it

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

My God. Multiple times I've been on that screen in the past. But every time, I'll have no idea how I got there. I've tried to get back, but the best I had was on a magazine's page at the very bottom.

Thank you for showing this.

My opinion? This is AWFUL design. That a second settings button is THERE is unbelievable. Maybe I'm not hip to how the fediverse exactly works, but this doesn't feel like the right route to that stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

You're not wrong, and the UI will be improved. There's a lot of work being actively done right now, so don't lose hope.

[–] robotdna 14 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Is Lemmy capable of playing that format of multimedia? And if so, do clients like Jerboa support it? I've also noticed this

[–] zerozaku 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Is Lemmy capable of playing that format of multimedia?

If it isn't, then it will be the biggest downside of fediverse. But I do remember seeing a gif while I was on my PC.

[–] entropicshart 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For the longest time Reddit only supported media through external sites (Imgur, copy, etc).

Memmy (iOS app in beta) supports uploading media to Imgur and then inserting the link, much like Apollo did; hoping to see that extended to other hosting sites as well

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Personally I think that hosting media is not the right move for Lemmy/kbin. Creates a long term never ending cost and liability. Reddit worked fine without hosting for a decade.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Seems like animated pictures in posts only work if it's in WebP format but in post bodies or comments gif works too. mp4 should be possible in theory but does not play for me. See this test post.

For the apps I doubt it. The native media libraries often lack support for animated images.

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

I think so. Kbin user avatars can be animated gifs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Seems to work on kbin. Can upload gifs and images from the comment screen.

[–] j4k3 8 points 2 years ago

You got no magic

[–] skybreaker 8 points 2 years ago

I don't think gifs and videos are locally supported. You need to link through another site. I could be wrong though

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

All the videos uploaded directly to Reddit never worked well on mobile clients (or even on web) and was slow as hell. It's up to the instance admins to decide whether media content should always be uploaded to 3rd parties like streamable, imgur or uploaded directly?

There's also IPFS for distributed file storage but I have no idea how that interacts with lemmy or how that is even moderated.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Reddit media always worked for me on Android baconreader. It had a few months sprinkled over the last ten or so years where random hosting sites or Reddit hosted media would choke, but it would always fix itself. I'm not sure how much of any of that is the app or the site or what.

This is the first I've heard of Ipfs and that looks VERY exciting...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

IPFS is basically fancy torrents. Pieces of media are accessed by the hash of their content and some metadata. It's neat, because it can be linked as a URL/URI similar to stuff hosted on the regular web. But, and the main website doesn't really make that clear AT ALL, all content is only available for as long as there are people interested in it. You access a file and distribute it to others from then on. After a while, people move on and old data is deleted from their cache, etc. Unless you 'pin' a piece of content and STORE IT YOURSELF, there is no guarantee it will still be available even 5 minutes after you delete it from your device.

In short: The website makes it seem as if IPFS is this big black hole of infinite and immutable storage when it actually is highly fragile. It can be great if used correctly though, for example if instances decide to keep an archive of successful posts and thereby share the load of storage and distribution. But because every IPFS member is also a distributor, the same legal problems that arise from torrent use will rear their heads again. So better not watch movies or browse a sub with illegal bits if they are hosted on IPFS. IPFS is not built for privacy either, but that's a problem many p2p projects have.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

That would cost a lot to host. Somehow, at one point, I ended up at https://share.tube/ which is a "PeerTube server" that uses ActivityPub, however I dunno how/if/when that would be integrated into kbin and lemmy.

[–] entropicshart 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Let’s test it! here’s a gif

Edit: trying to upload a video or gif throws an “unsupported” error - but hyperlinking gifs should work fine

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Fyi Feedback in case you were curious about other people's experience:
On Android chrome kbin app, gif loaded into browser, image scaled to 1x and didn't fill or stretch at all, preloaded on its own fine, had to click play, didn't loop.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Uploading images to kbin on mobile is a little weird... I think you have to just tap outside of the image upload modal and there's no indication if it worked until you hit post

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

For video, I think the best you’re likely to get is embedded players from popular video hosts. The costs and challenges of hosting video content are just not worth it for the people hosting the instances.

GIF as a format is garbage. Terrible compression, poor quality, and weird quirks. They’re so bad that most platforms that host GIFs are just transparently converting them to MP4 videos because they actually take up fewer resources. If they get added the only way I see it happening is as extremely short form video with strict file size limits.

If I’m being honest though I don’t miss ithem at all.

[–] NocturnalNebula 1 points 2 years ago

I keep looking for answers to gifs/mp4s/webms, etc….

This is probably my most missed feature of the Fediverse. I want to see gifs and videos in line when I’m scrolling. Not sure if this is a limitation of ActivityPub or if specific app developers need to add the functionality. Clicking in on a link and being taken to a separate page to view a gif or video doesn’t feel good imo

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