When we want to watch a video online, the first thing that comes to mind is YouTube. But the popular platform is often censored in several countries, such as China and North Korea, which even ban YouTube from time to time.
But apart from censorship, recently even YouTube itself has ended up blocking many legitimate channels due to copyright. Ultimately, video are the ones who are affected the most due to this blocking.
For those affected by YouTube's technical glitch, there is another open source alternative. It's called PeerTube (the source code is available on GitHub).
As its name suggests, the P2P video sharing platform is decentralized, just like BitTorrent. Users can host videos on their own instance (a PeerTube server) that has its own audience.
It can connect to other PeerTube instances, using a protocol called ActivityPub. This allows users of one instance to receive video recommendations from other instances. You can see how a PeerTube server works here
PeerTube supports WebTorrent, which can reduce bandwidth costs, as the people watching the videos provide their own bandwidth. However, for creators, there are still costs to cover, such as hosting and website development. While there is scope for monetization, it is not that easy.
However, what PeerTube gives creators is power over their content, as any day their videos could be blocked or censored.
The first version of PeerTube was launched last year. The non-profit company Framasoft, based in France, ran a crowdfunding campaign to continue the development of the platform.
