Remove YouTube

[resynth1943]

This commit removes several references to YouTube, and the main YouTube video on the home page.

This greatly improves privacy, and removes Mastodon's dependency on YouTube for the introduction. Instead, users are introduced to the safer alternative: Peertube. This is a victory for privacy, as Peertube does not collect data on users. Trusting Google to respect people's privacy is naive, as they have abused this trust repeatedly in the past.

[ghost]

I second this

[Scupake]

^

[TheEvilSkeleton]

what about invidio.us? if they still want to use YouTube, then i would recommend Invidious

[resynth1943]

For one, Invidious barely works. This is coming from someone who uses it daily. Peertube is faster than YouTube too, in my experience.

[TheEvilSkeleton]

ah

[trwnh]

overall i'm not sure this is that urgent or crucial a change to make? either way the pr has issues, see comments

[resynth1943]

overall i'm not sure this is that urgent or crucial a change to make?

When you're developing a FOSS project, it's best to use FOSS services, in my humble opinion.

As explained above, this is a crucial change because of user privacy and ethics.

Many thanks.

[nightpool]

While I appreciate the contribution, PeerTube is fundamentally worse for user privacy—instead of just Youtube having access to your IP and a list of what videos you've watched, now everybody has access to your IP and a list of what videos you've watched, since peertube's use of WebTorrent means that that is publicly available information.

[nightpool]

I marked this as "requested changes" because i thought it might be okay to merge the changes to the example but not the changes to the embedded _index video, but after some reflection, i think we might not want to change that either: it's really important that users reading the documentation are exposed to things that they're familiar with, and that Mastodon is a project for everyday users, not just for people already familiar with decentralized FOSS projects and already understand what peertube is. It would also be misleading to suggest that embeds only work with ActivityPub compatible projects, which is another way i could see people interpreting this change.

[TheEvilSkeleton]

While I appreciate the contribution, PeerTube is fundamentally worse for user privacy—instead of just Youtube having access to your IP and a list of what videos you've watched, now everybody has access to your IP and a list of what videos you've watched, since peertube's use of WebTorrent means that that is publicly available information.

can you provide the evidence that the publicly available information have been unethically used against Peertube users (e.g. doxxing, stealing personal information, selling information, etc.)? i find it hard to believe this tbh

[resynth1943]

I don't see why users wouldn't already be familiar with Peertube. The interface is quite obvious; anyone could use it.

EDIT: If you don't want to use Peertube, at least self-host the video. But right now, this is not a good situation.

[resynth1943]

It would also be misleading to suggest that embeds only work with ActivityPub compatible projects, which is another way i could see people interpreting this change.

Why can't we flag this up to the user, if you are concerned about it?

[Gargron]

I don't think promoting decentralization is an all-or-nothing deal. We are promoting one piece of decentralized tech (Mastodon) while using conventional tech where it's practical (GitHub, YouTube). Using YouTube to host the video is practical, as is presenting YouTube embeds in the OEmbed docs, as YouTube links are the ones shared the most in practice.

[resynth1943]

Why is using Peertube not practical here? If anything, it's faster than YouTube.

All on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free.

What happened to these core values that you state on your home page?

YouTube is neither community-owned nor ad-free, while Peertube is. It seems very disappointing that the creator of a wonderful decentralised network is taking a stance against decentralisation, especially while companies like Google continue to abuse the privacy of billions of users online. Promoting these nonfree services that continue to capitalise on user data and censor important topics is quite harmful to the community.

Furthermore, I don't really see the issue with embedding Peertube on the homepage. It's a safer alternative, and it would be a win for decentralisation. Then again, it's your project, as #12145 demonstrates.

Perhaps fighting for freedom isn't what this project is about?

[ghost]

^

[Scupake]

that's a bit harsh but I agree

[scarlet-tobar]

Maybe that video file could be hosted on joinmastodon? And then just linked in Mastodon instances.

[ghost]

Hey everybody!

First of all: @resynth1943 thanks a lot for your continuous work. :)

@nightpool

While I appreciate the contribution, PeerTube is fundamentally worse for user privacy—instead of just Youtube having access to your IP and a list of what videos you've watched, now everybody has access to your IP and a list of what videos you've watched, since peertube's use of WebTorrent means that that is publicly available information.

Yeah, that is true. However, this could also be changed. In Peertube, you can change how the videos are served on an account-basis. So there is the option to avoid webtorrent completely and serve it like youtube centrally.

@Gargron :

I don't think promoting decentralization is an all-or-nothing deal. We are promoting one piece of decentralized tech (Mastodon) while using conventional tech where it's practical (GitHub, YouTube).

I think one of the main reasons to suggest peertube here instead of youtube is to avoid loading the tracking scripts from youtube/google.

also @Gargron :

Using YouTube to host the video is practical, as is presenting YouTube embeds in the OEmbed docs, as YouTube links are the ones shared the most in practice.

Yeah, that is understandable. Am i correct that hosting this video on the mastodon servers solves both use-cases? i.e. it would be embeddable and avoid to load the tracking scripts by google?

I think this would be awesome.

Thanks everybody! :)

[Gargron]

Why is using Peertube not practical here?

I'll answer why YouTube is practical. It takes care of showing clients bandwidth-appropriate resolutions, it has its own CDN system so it's fast across the globe, it has a closed captions system where community members can submit translations, as well as providing machine-translated captions for other languages, the views translate into the video being more discoverable on YouTube's own website which can expose more people to our ideas, and it helps that it's familiar and trusted.

YouTube code (and thus any Google tracking) is only loaded when the user clicks the video button.

All on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free.

What happened to these core values that you state on your home page?

The sentence talks about the Mastodon platform, i.e. the actual network of servers running the Mastodon software, which is community-owned (servers are owned by different individuals and organizations) and ad-free (Mastodon software does not ship with ads). The joinmastodon.org website is not the Mastodon platform itself, it's just a website.

Perhaps fighting for freedom isn't what this project is about?

I care about the code we ship, i.e. Mastodon the software. The code you install on your server is free software, completely independent, it will run in a vacuum. All the other arguments are moot. If there are tools that will help the project that are not purist, I will use them. I'm not Stallman and have never claimed to be.

The sentiment that YouTube links are to be avoided is so incredibly fringe even within the tech community, and our target audience is meant to be far wider than that. You ask a random person on the street if they have a negative view of websites that embed or link to YouTube and they'll give you a funny look.

[r3k2]

please remove youtube, any propietary software should not be promoted whatsoever. live by example.