WebRTC and the decentralised net

The WebRTC ability built into modern browsers allows for peer-to-peer web connections, as opposed to the old client-server model. There is a new service just released, designed to provide an alternative to the increasingly restrictive practices of YouTube. Bitchute streams videos between peers, but it does it within the browser, using WebRTC, and requires no special app to be installed.

This is quite a big deal, as it allows media to be provided without centralised control, and at zero cost (the bandwidth costs are essentially distributed to everyone using the network, and are individually trivial). This will be followed by entire websites that have no central host, delivered peer-to-peer, but are accessed just like normal pages in the browser.

There is not much of interest on Bitchute yet, but I think these are very interesting developments, with a growing revolt against the major social media platforms.

Definetly interesting as could solve denial of service plague, but there is one slight problem. The fate of Aristotle's Comedy.

In such eco system rare species will not survive. Rats will. You want your product to live long (and prosper)? It'll again depend on social media adverts/hype. We all assume the author will seed something for eternity, but it is not so.
Someone will argue that on internet something rare means crap, but I just have to disagree seeing so many brilliant covers but also original works on YT that have only a few views.

On the other hand maybe I'm wrong. The other day I've linked to an affordable 10Tb HDD and in upcoming years we'll probably see even bigger backup "monsters". PC audience, not just gamers, are open for upgrades and with huge free space there will be no reason not to act as peer/seed for accessed material that has for example less than 100 other seeders. Noone can ever burn the whole Alexandria library nor parts of it then!

An additional problem are the rubbish hardware leechers. They can't share and will never be able to share but will only leech. Phones, yes. Parasytes.
I don't want my machine to be used as peer to any kind of garbage, I don't want to be milked by the species I can't stand. Because of that I'll have to avoid Bitchute and anything similar till they restrict it somehow so it refuses to work on phones.

Phones are not leechers in this scenario, and participate in seeding the content. I think you misunderstand how it works. With this system, a person is only downloading and seeding the video while they have it open in their browser. Once the page is closed, the seeding stops - it is not installing a torrent client that runs all the time.

The system relies upon the fact that the large majority can download a video faster than they can watch the content. Let's say that a five minute video takes one minute to download. While you are watching the video, you are spending five times longer acting as a seeder than a leecher. If there is only one seeder available, the first person to watch that video would download from there. But, if a second person starts to watch the same video at the same time, he can download from either or both. As more people start to watch the video, the more sources there are to serve it to others, and demand is always met.

On the question of long term archival of rarities, there is a potential problem of all sources disappearing. However, there are other projects for permanent distributed storage using P2P and Bitcoin technology (see https://storj.io). These projects are all very new, but as they start to come together, the idea of a distributed, permanent Library of Alexandria (with no central point to be burned down) is entirely possible.

Hmmm, how do you stop the pedophiles with this platform?

Well, with regards to Bitchute specifically, which acts as the front-end and the index for all the content, they can remove and block anything according to their policies.

The fact is, such people already have extremely sophisticated encrypted networks. A platform like this would be of no use to them, and they already have much better options for secretly exchanging material. In the end, you can't stop those people with technology - you have to do old fashioned police work and catch the bastards, as they did recently with the Australian Peter Scully, who operated on the dark web.

Ripper said:

With this system, a person is only downloading and seeding the video while they have it open in their browser. Once the page is closed, the seeding stops - it is not installing a torrent client that runs all the time.

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This idea won't work and will soon die a horrible death.

Ripper said:

Bitcoin

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Bitcoin is a fraud. Just as with DLC and gambling boxes, majority and media refuse to admit it.

crpgnut said:

Hmmm, how do you stop the pedophiles with this platform?

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This platform is not the police. Platforms and services are IMO not supposed to act as the police anyway.
As Ripper already answered, crime and terrorism already uses other "solutions" against NSA and whatnot. An example is sharing e-mail password and accessing unsent e-mail (draft), another example is sharing encrypted content on otherwise legit clouds and distributing passwords only to some closed group of people.

Sorry, Joxer, but I'm afraid you just don't know what you're talking about. I would suggest reading up on all the developments of blockchain technology and digital currency, and how these things are being researched and implemented - not only by central banks and major companies, but how it's being harnessed in ways far beyond cryptocurrency.

Personally, I use Bitcoin on a regular basis to pay for my email service, my VPN, my cloud storage, my VPS, and to make donations to political causes.

Bitcoin and every similar controlled by unknown entities "virtual" but in fact money laundry and tax free currency can get only one message from me.
Get off my property.

The bitcoin system is open, transparent and verifiable. No single entity can control it, and it doesn't need anyone to control it. That is the whole point. If it were controlled by some mysterious "unknown entity", of course no-one serious would touch it.

The main point though, is the blockchain technology that underlies Bitcoin. This is also open, and is being implemented in myriad ways all over the world. It is this tech that I'm saying can be helpful to the idea of long-term distributed storage, not necessarily Bitcoin itself.

Main issue I see is the first part of joxer's post which is that only popular things will keep existing...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Believe what you wish Ripper.
I believe only in signed documents.

joxer said:

Believe what you wish Ripper.
I believe only in signed documents.

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OK, I'll continue to believe in open and transparent systems that can be fully audited, understood, and verified - and you can place your faith in signed documents.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sweden-blockchain-idUSKCN0Z22KV

Pladio said:

Main issue I see is the first part of joxer's post which is that only popular things will keep existing…

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Yes, and as I said, there are drawbacks in the early implementation. There's a couple of considerations.

Firstly, as it stands now, the system would work well for people that want to have channels beyond Youtube's control. If I were an unhappy content creator, like Philip de Franco, I would run a cheap VPS to seed my content, to ensure that it was always available. The beauty of this system is that, although the VPS could only serve enough bandwidth to a few users at a time, if the concurrent demand grows, so does the supply of available sources - over P2P from other users. It allows the mass delivery of media without the need for a mega-infrastructure, that only a Google could provide.

If we are thinking more about long term archival, rather than just media delivery, the current system is inadequate. What I was talking about, is the possibility of linking a system like this to a system like Storj.io, that offers robust distributed storage. A project that already functions in this way is http://www.alexandria.io/

These are early days for distributed tech, and there are still problems to be solved, but one has to bear in mind that Youtube is also an entirely unsatisfactory repository for long-term knowledge - anything may be deleted, censored or purged at the discretion of a single private entity.

Well good luck as plenty of older P2P torrents don't get seeded after a few years. So I'll take the current version of how media is delivered compared to a P2P system.

PS: I'll also never use or farm any form of bitcoin either.

Couchpotato said:

Well good luck as plenty of older P2P torrents don't get seeded after a few years. So I'll take the current version of how media is delivered compared to a P2P system.

PS: I'll also never use or farm any form of bitcoin either.

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Not sure if you read my reply to Pladio. The Bitchute system doesn't attempt to solve the problem of long term storage; it is definitely possible for older material to disappear. What it attempts and succeeds at doing is making it possible for media creators to mass distribute their videos, without relying on the control of a corporate giant. As I said, a creator who wants to ensure their media is available would need to make sure it is seeded - but in this system that becomes extremely affordable and practical. For creators who face having their Youtube videos deleted entirely, possibly their entire channels nuked, because of very restrictive policies and bogus complaints, that is a very good tradeoff.

With regard to Bitcoin, I'm not encouraging anyone to use it - as a currency its value is highly unstable, and I wouldn't put any savings in it. The part that I'm insisting on, is that the blockchain technology that underlies it is extremely secure and reliable, and can be used in all sorts of innovative ways to solve problems. There is no way an advanced country like Sweden (and several others) would entrust their land registry, a bedrock of any economy, to some shady and poorly understood system. They only do so because it can be verified and shown to be trustworthy.

Didn't plan to return here, but… Youtube decadence.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comicsandcosplay/comics/critical-miss/17423-Erin-Alone