Pixelfed introduces Loops, a Short-Form Video App
Pixelfed introduces Loops, a Short-Form Video App
Short-form video might in fact be the next frontier for federated media. The dev behind a popular photo-sharing platform is diving in headfirst.
The Fediverse might be getting their own mashups of Tiktok, YouTube, and Vine sooner than anyone thought, thanks to the work of one prolific dev spearheading an effort. The best part? He's helping other projects in the space, too.
Well this is Interesting.
Video storage and bandwidth is probably my most pressing concern, but that's the same as with peertube, no?
Speaking of which, are they going to consult with PeerTube for cross compatibility?
Evidently, [loops and goldfish] are intended to be compatible with one another, as well as other video platforms in the Fediverse, such as PeerTube or Vidzy.
From the article. So yes, they should be cross compatible at some point.
introducing peertube shorts™️
There are a couple of prpeertube creators that make short form content
Okay but storing videos is very expensive. Even in its compressed form. Even images are being disabled in some instances in lemmy because of this. And videos are hundreds of images composed together. Who will run them?
It's less expensive than you would think. Object Storage is actually really, really cheap in a lot of cases. I host a PeerTube instance, and while it does cost me money every month, the cost is decently offset by recurring donations, as well as the savings that Object Storage brings.
This. It's getting it out of storage that's expensive (if you're doing the cloud thing - if doing colo, probably just then down to cost of drives after a short time).
Sorry yes, I forgot donations.
I think it's worth considering a model where one might be expected to provide hosting for their own video. Certainly not necessary now but probably will be if/when video on fedi takes off
I guess. An average 30 sec video in Tiktok is around 10mb. So with a S3 storage. For a monthly budget of 10€, you could roughly store 500k of those videos. Taking also account the server bills (10-20€) That would be 30€ per month. For a million of those videos would be 20€ so monthly around 50€ euros. For people that really want to host one. I guess you could. But it's definitely more expensive than something like Lemmy.
Why do short videos have to loop automatically with no way to turn it off? Who the hell decided that was a good idea and why has every other app followed suit?
I especially hate the ones designed to loop because they think it's "so clever".
"Never play with liquid mercury
It's really bad for your health and shit
That's why you should..."🤮
It's like the darkest pattern. Making it so that quitting has to be a conscious choice. I see why amoral companies would use it, don't know why FOSS would too.
Video does love centralisation, always good to see some pushback.
This might not necessarily be the case for much longer with storage costs finally reaching certain thresholds.
2TB SSDs only cost ~$100 and you can cram a lot of SSDs into a tiny space with only a minimal amount of cooling (still need a fan but just a fan).
The next bottleneck to overcome is upload bandwidth. Too many providers offer asynchronous service with weirdly low/slow upload limitations. However, that too might be changing over the next few years as DOCSIS 4.0 supports 10Gbit down/6Gbit up (DOCSIS 3.1 only supported ~1Gbit up). An important note about DOCSIS 4.0 is that in order to take advantage of it's improved features (on the ISP end) you need to provide more upload bandwidth to the client (well, you can still cap it at the router but at that point the ISP is just being an asshole instead of actually "managing bandwidth").
And don't forget Peertube already uses P2P to spread the load between the server and the viewers.
[this is good]
Regarding Sup: dansup has mentioned that he's put the project on hold until the new EU guidelines around interoperability (targeting whatsapp) are available.
Good to know, I was wondering about that!
Oooh this looks interesting, would love to check it out to see how it goes :0
Omggg!!1!1! This is what I've been waiting for! Yay. I wonder if floptropica will adopt this platform.
What’s the plan for hosting?
Get some Chinese investors and a couple affiliate links…what could go wrong
Very cool. Might give Pixelfed a try at some point.
I'm giving it a shot now. I kind of like it, like what insta could have been
People keep asking about storage and that's a valid concern. I remember a while ago Linus made a video about a crypto that can be mined with storage. So he made a huge raid of old drives. I wonder if something like this could or would be practical for a decentralized storage solution. Like... Encourage people to set up NAS's that can be used sort of like torrent seeding for a decentralized video platform and reward them with crypto.
I dunno... Just thinking out loud.
Edit: Jeez hit a nerve with the crypto thing, huh? Then what's the solution? Storage costs money. So ads? Subscription cost?
No, crypto is never the solution for anything. Its use cases are limited to drugs and scams, which are sometimes the same things.
Pixelfed is really interesting, and this sounds like a fun project!
The only problem major problem I have encountered with trying to use defederated social medias, outside of Lemmy, like it and mastadon has been the lack of discover ability. I guess I don't know how to properly utilize the platforms, but I never find much that is particular to my interests
What's wrong with finding content using hashtags and keyword searches?
Right now hash tags on the largest pixelfed instance (pixelfed.social) are broken—clicking a hash tag in a photo’s caption takes the user to a missing page. Even on other instances where browsing by hash tag isn’t broken, they aren’t federated, so if you click #Amsterdam, you’ll only see other photos on the same (smaller) instance, and it’s not even obvious whether that’s working right because the post count will say one thing, but it’ll only show you like three or four photos.
Lots of potential, but it’s just not there yet.
Idk this has never been too difficult for me, I just piggyback other people's connections. Like literally find one person that seems cool, stalk their reposts/likes/follows for other people that seem cool and follow them too. repeat as necessary until you have a good feed built up.
Short form and vertical format both suck, so meh. I'd rather they did proper video hosting to compete with regular Youtube, though that would cost way more to pull off so I'm not holding my breath.
You mean PeerTube?
I would so much like to love peertube, but I have yet to find any instance that hosts the trash reevant to my interests. Mostly they either are filled with reuploads from YouTube, or are full of radicalized conspiracy theories (which I encounter very rarely on any other form of fediverse).
And then there is the "dumploads", which makes the instances seem like they only have one active contributor, as they dump like 60 videos right after another, resulting the frontpages to have just one note content. This, however, could be gixed by otion to group conecutive uploads as "[latest video] and [n] other videos from [user]", which would help to find more diverse content, as well as discourage dumping.
Then again, that is only my opinion, and if PeerTube is fine for others, who am I to complain. It just doesn't seem to be for me :/
Ew, no thanks.
The more the merrier
Looks like the short form video virus has reached us.
"Pixelfed", "sup.", "Loops" honestly Pixelfed is like the only fediverse brand with moderately modern naming schemes, like I could imagine Loops and sup gaining actually traction outside of Linux folks, would honestly be a huge win for fedi
Honestly the occasional reposted tik tok is something I really miss from reddit, in the right community scrolling through the top of the week was an absolute blast!
I'm really glad to see some short form video fedi service joining the fediverse, hopefully it pans out well and gets enough users to have consistent content!
And no one will use it because mobile apps can’t upload.