PeerTube

Author: Abigail Whittier

Short Summary

PeerTube is a free, open-source, decentralized, and federated video platform site that aims to provide an alternative to popular platforms like YouTube or Vimeo. It uses social media and peer-to-peer diffusion so users can send, look at, comment on, rate, and share videos on streaming. As of 2021, it has about 80,000 monthly users, and more than 360,000 videos.

Website address: joinpeertube.org

Creator: Chocobozzz

Peer-to-peer broadcasting source

Profile

Each PeerTube instance provides a website to watch videos, making it independent from other instances in appearance, features, and rules.

PeerTube runs a variety of servers, who host torrent trackers in conjunction with web browsers on which videos are viewed. This allows the load to be shared between the server and the clients. Independent entities run a federation of instances, and each server is operated by the administration of a distinct entity. Each server can host many videos while also federating with other servers so users can watch their videos in the same user interface. This means PeerTube does not have to build a huge infrastructure, since a high quantity of videos can still be hosted on the unified platform. PeerTube also uses different protocols to stay decentralized and be compatible with other fediverse services. This allows it to resist vendor lock-in and censorship.

Governance

PeerTube’s instances have common rules (for example: requiring registration). Several instances can form a federation, in order to follow another instance’s videos, even if the video is stored only by the instance that published it. The federations are independent and asymmetrical (an instance can display another’s videos without requiring them to do the same). Administrators have an incentive to build communities because they can choose to mirror one video, or whole instances. However, the decentralization of the platform can lead to some issues, notably a lack of relevant search results or lack of ad placement capacity (because each user would have to install a plugin to watch a sponsor video).

Friends & Partners

Finances

Framasoft first raised 53,100€ through a crowdfunding campaign in 2018, raising more than double their initial goal of 20,000€. The first stable version of PeerTube was launched in October of 2018 using these funds. Another fundraising campaign was launched in May 2020 to pay for software developments.

Origin Story

PeerTube was created by web developer Chocobozzz in 2015, using WebTorrent to share videos. Framasoft hired the founder when they bought the platform in 2017, keen on supporting an alternative to YouTube.