this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2020
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Peertube
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A free software to take back control of your videos
Peertube is an open, federated alternative to Youtube without advertising or tracking. On this site, you can find a good Peertube instance, with good rules, good moderation and most importantly a friendly community.
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Is there a browser add-on that automatically whitelists (or what ever the current en vogue term for that is) javascript from FOSS code running websites by comparing the JS files to a hash or something like that?
Not perfect, hogs a little too much memory for comfort, sometimes doesn't even work on the FSF members forum, but LibreJS is what you are looking for.
ooo this is exactly what I've been wanting
Yes, I am somewhat aware of this... but I think this needs support on the side of the website code itself, right? I was rather thinking about a pure client-side option. Edit: ok the white listing works client side only, but some sort of automated hash based system that I could install on the browser of my hypothetical grandmother would still be great to have.
that I could install on the browser of my hypothetical grandmother would still be great to have
Just use a decent ad-blocker for that, uBlock origin is the best. Blocking everything by default will just make your grandma confused
It should be possible to run uBlock origin in hard mode with a custom dynamic filtering allowlist for trusted sites.
Sure, but that wouldn't work on various instances of Peertube running the same javascript code on different domains.
Honnestly, if JS is a problem then perhaps PeerTube should make an alternative client.
Very few people would actually use it. IMO it's not worth the effort, they should focus on quality of life features, so that peertube becomes a very good alternative to other video sharing services.
People that don't like JS can use a third party client. Maintaining 2 clients is a lot of work, and not really motivating if only 3 people use one of them. Also on peertube the JS actually has a purpose that can't be replicated with JS (P2P video loading).
An anyway the code is OSS, so there's not really any risk in enabling JS for peertube.
I've seen found out about SimpleerTube and recommended it in that list you linked so that's one option without using javascript. Of course, I'm thinking also of the possibility that desktop client could do for P2P sharing too. Apparently, there is a project for a Linux client so that's cool. I don't have a problem about JS personally and yeah it's OSS so if somebody wants it maybe they could do something (I'd be up to donate a small amount maybe too). Perhaps Framasoft's PeerTube team could help boost third party clients in their next fundraiser too? Maybe give a percentage of funds to selected projects but that is of course more work and I'm not sure Framasoft would want to do that either way. They could also just do a series of blogpost and emails about those clients with a message on how to support them (both code contributions, reporting bugs, feature request and donations).
SimpleerTube kinda sucks in terms of UI. If I want to browse peertube without JS I'm more likely to use a desktop client like peertube-viewer or cuttlefish, which are a lot lighter than a web browser, even without JS, and much better looking than SimpleerTube (which could look quite good if some work went into its looks IMO).
Ideally there should be a desktop client that is capable of using webtorrent for viewing, then keeping the videos on disk and continuing seeding them. That way, it would make webtorrent much much more useful, because you could start to have a lot more long term seeders. For the moment, webtorrent only makes sense in the livestreams.
Yes I agree completely with you. I'm looking forward to Cuttlefish as that seems like the direction they are going.
Would understand their users better if they made it work without JS though.
Default HTML5 Video player for the win.
Except they still need to implement peer to peer mechanism for that HTML5 video player somehow. It kind of defeat the purpose of PeerTube if it doesn't implement that mechanism for peering as a network load balancing for the server. I don't think it's quite their goal in mind to have server handle all of the network load which isn't practical on the cloud computing market today and situation that various ISP imposed bandwidth caps for no reason.
Peertube uses P2P? As in your computer uploads parts of the video to other users as you watch it? Actually didn't wasn't aware of that since most P2P software tells you that it uses your device for uploading when you first open it.
I mean, I guess that's why it's called Peertube?
I know this comment is a couple of months old now, but just getting caught up on this community today. If you haven't had a chance, I would recommend having a look at https://joinpeertube.org/ and the section "About peer-to-peer broadcasting and watching". Heck, maybe all the sections? Peertube has a pile of excellent things going on under the hood.