@pixelfed: Loops is a new platform for sharing short videos, and it's open source + federated Using #ActivityPub

gedaliyah@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 590 points –
pixelfed (@pixelfed@mastodon.social)
mastodon.social
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Neat! I’ll probably try it out. Like it or not, short form video is really popular now, so this feels like a good thing to grow Pixelfed and the fediverse

As someone who cannot stand stories, TikTok, and basically short form video as a whole, I may check this out for the fediverse!!

I occasionally get pulled into the YouTube shorts and hate howuch time I lose to them. Worse was that although I barely use Instagram beyond keeping in contact with friends who only use it, I happened to watch the reels for a little yesterday and they were really entertaining.

A lot of amateur video creators don't have the experience to keep their work engaging for long periods of time, half the internet feels like SNL sketches that make their best punchline in the first 20 seconds and then milk the same joke for the next 3 minutes. The way short form content cuts through the crap is actually quite nice. It obviously has a whole bunch of its own issues but that's mostly due to chasing the algorithms favour, not the short form nature of the content.

For sure, it will be interesting to see how it grows organically as of most things in the fediverse.

It will also come with an open source "For You" algorithm. I've been wishing the fediverse do this since I joined and it took literally banning TikTok for it to happen in the span of a few months by dansup for Loops, who thankfully has a favorable outlook on the use of algorithms on the fediverse.

It's easy to forget that algorithms were originally added to social media as a benefit to the user. It's easy to miss the content you want to see when you follow lots of accounts.

I would love to see an algorithm that allows for manual adjustment. Kagi search allows a user to raise or lower the priority of individual results. I can't think of another platform or service that does this explicitly. Most do it implicitly through various forms of engagement.

I don't care for short form videos, but this is still really cool. Hopefully it provides an embed URL for the videos so the ones that get posted to Lemmy can be embedded (which is how Peertube links work).

this tbh! reddit, tiktok, etc. doesn't properly embed in discord anymore, so I could just upload funny clips to Loops and have an actual playable embed when I share the link.

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This is very interesting, but makes me wonder if nonprofit initiatives will be able to host video sharing platforms in the fediverse, because of the server damends of it.

It certainly is possible but the more fancy stuff would need to be locked behind some paywall. Hosting 720p30 content is very doable but if users have the option they will of course upload everything and their mother in 4k60 at which point gl with the storage costs alone, nvm the need for hardware acceleration.

It'll definitely need some kind of quality enforcement to make hosting work. It'd be really useful if the app would automatically transcode to the server's preferred quality when uploading, using the uploaders device. If the server has to transcode all the video the compute costs could get astronomical.

There should be no reason not to transcode onboard, right? Modern mobile devices could probably process video no problem and then the upload would be smaller and quicker than sending the original. Only issue might be long videos, but I think there's a case to be made that these types of platforms should have a firm duration cap of only a few minutes tops.

Seems this would be a great way to drive financial support.

I've reprocessed my own video down to 480, and am surprised at how much stuff is perfectly viewable at that resolution, even on larger devices.

It's too easy to save stuff at a higher than needed resolution.

This is only semi-related but do you think it's possible to use a neural network to optimize compression?

Edit: wait I just realized I'm stupid this is 4/5 of Nvidia's AI ventures.

everything and their mother in 4k60

Here before someone makes a "yo mama" joke

yo mama's bitrate is so large that nobody's video decoder is up to the task

Makes me wonder if we could get an open source Google-style ad platform that only works in the fediverse and directly funds whoever's server is being used.

Oh man I can't wait for the rational, level-headed discussions that would come out of this.

But yeah I do think a project like this will be inevitable, it just remains to be seen how palatable people will find it

Nah, I'd much rather go down the micro transaction route. You get to watch some portion of the video (say, 30s), then you need to pay a few cents to continue.

We'd need a centralized payment service to keep costs down, but the rest can be decentralized. I'm thinking we'd use something like GNU Taler, so you'd load up your account, use Taler to pay creators, and then creators could cash in every to often.

Fucking hate short videos but if this gets normies on the federated side then I'm all for it

Wait, you want the normies here?

I consider myself a normie. It took me awhile to understand the fediverse.

Yes, everyone deserves a bullshit free social experience. You're more than welcome to go start your own instance that only federates with other hardcore nerd instances

Great platform name. Though I like the idea, but it's currently only one developer. It's the same dev behind Pixelfed. He's a good dev, but I feel like he's stretching himself too thin to make both platforms the amount of development they need to pick up steam.

Stretched too thin is an understatement.

Between Pixelfed, Sup, Loops, FediDB, fediverse.info, PubKit, all that comes with developing those, his main job, and whatever else he has cooking, I don't like being so heavily dependent on the whims of one dev. I have mad respect for him and everything he has done, but this situation is definitely limiting the growth of the platforms, contributions to those platforms, and his general decision making on what to develop and how to prioritize.

I try to be optimistic because in the end what he's doing is a net positive, but we're going to need more than one man's raw coding talent. That's why although I'm exited for Loops, I'm tempering my expectations and expecting a cap on the popularity and adoption of Loops like with Pixelfed unless something changes.

Dansup is seriously great at designing social platforms. I don't have much personal use for it, as I never cared for instagram, but I think Pixelfed is the best designed platform on the Fediverse. I'm sure Loops will be great too. Fantastic name too.

Kudos to the guy for doing stuff + it being FOSS, but I wouldn’t call him “great at designing social platforms”. Pixelfed is fediverse instagram, loops is fediverse tiktok

Pretty much everything on the fediverse is just a clone of another social media. Pixelfed still has the most intuitive design for new users and a great onboarding process. Took Mastodon a while to catch up.

Just wait 'til you find out that Lemmy is also a fediverse clone of a toxic platform

Yea part of the point in designing these alternatives (to my understanding) is that the userbase can feel immediately at home, there is little barrier to entry

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I was wondering when someone was going to create a Fediverse platform like this. Figured it would be the folks at either PixelFed or Peertube. Can't wait to try it out!

That sounds cool. We've been needing some sort of federated video sharing platform.

There is peertube for years. A simple plugin for shorts would be enough. But hey, I don't judge the way it goes. Good luck for loops. I hope dansup has some time for his other projects, like sup. Never heard about sup again, is it dead?

I vaguely remember it being put on hold for some alignment with European privacy laws or something along those lines.

This is well timed considering the TikTok ban timeline. Loops will have enough time to sort out any bugs or issues right now with a slow trickle of traffic and then probably grow exponentially in the power vacuum left behind when TikTok vanishes from the various app stores.

I don't think Loops will have the addicting effect like TikTok, which is a good thing, but I feel like that's what most people want.

Good.

I hope there will be a filter to filter by content format

Cool, a whole new way to learn about what every type of penis looks like

If anybody's interested in signing up for the rolling beta, here's the link

What are the chances we get a Fediverse YouTube eventually?

You mean Peertube?

I was aware of it, but is it part of the fediverse? If so, I was unaware. I thought it was around before.

As far as I can tell, it's always used ActivityPub for instances to communicate with each other, with video streaming mainly facilitated using WebTorrent on the backend to keep use of the host low.