this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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And then you run into the challenge of moderation.
If it's possible to be handed random videos to seed that you've never watched, criminals would take advantage of that to upload illicit content that no one wants hosted...
It may only work to seed videos that you've explicitly whitelisted. Ex. Maybe "liking" the video also automatically volunteers some of your bandwidth to seed it. But then you will still open yourself up to legal disputes from copyright trolls. Just like YT, they would still be able to go around spamming C&Ds at everyone, and who is going to have time or money to fight it? Most would just take the video down immediately.
And that's all assuming that exposing your IP directly to the public doesn't leave you vulnerable.
On top of all of that, one of YT's biggest values is that you can view most content in a browser while not logged in. Which I'm guessing is where a huge number of views come from. The core users would just be footing the bill for a bunch of freeloaders. But assuming everything else is solved, maybe it's worth the tradeoff...?
I think it might still just have to allow advertizing. Maybe not individually targeted advertizing, but like a general banner ad in a sidebar for the server host's benefit, or a video creator's midroll sponsor ad. Or a a small server subscription fee for reasonably large servers, like apps do.
Even if the hosts make some money off it and it's not entirely free and ad free for all instances, it could still be better than one single, centralized corporation that's in control of everything and can monetize however it wants without consequence.
But regardless, the issue with potentially unintentionally seeding child abuse materials, revenge porn, and so on is my main concern. I personally won't touch the platform until and unless I'm sure I will have control over what I do or don't seed and that I will never end up unknowingly doing this just by using the service.