What is the incentive to self host when embedding YouTube videos is free and easy? Peer tube might make it easy but it adds a lot of maintenance complexity and server costs. Is the avoiding risk associated with YouTube over the video control worth that cost? For some maybe, but most I imagine not.
> What is the incentive to self host when embedding YouTube videos is free and easy?
If your videos include any of the verboten topics, then Youtube is not free and easy. Also they can change those topics at any time on a whim, and start retroactively removing/striking/banning. They'll drop a ban-hammer on you for multiple "violations". For example, imagine you wanted to discuss Covid 19 in any non-CDC approved way during 2020/2021? If you mentioned the Lab Leak Theory back when it was politically incorrect, or questioned the efficacy of cloth masks, your content was removed and you were given a strike. Your entire presence could be deleted, and by the time it turns out you were right (or at least possibly right), you're already disappeared.
(ftr I am sympathetic to YT because I do think there needs to be some moderation. It's a hard problem and I don't have all the answers)
I mean, I personally deleted every video I put on YouTube once they wanted to start putting ads into my media to monetize them when I put them up for people to see for free.
Embedding youtube videos means tracking javascript for users, potentially ads for other companies showing up (if not now, later), it just doesn't seem sustainable.
Peertube seems not so good because of the overhead of federating, but the upside of course is anyone on other services like Mastodon can just add comments... no need for yet another 3rd party vendor with their own tracking javascript to handle comment threads... and people can trivially share your video on other federated services.
But it does have a lot of overhead if it's federating a lot.
"Free (price) and easy" are not the values peertube is pushing forth, so it's not really relevant. Peertube makes it so you own your infrastructure, your data, and can do whatever you decide to do. You are not subject to foreign laws like with YouTube, you are not dependent on ads that are a problem by design, you are not beholden to ecocidal capitalism to display videos, you do not have to give more power to a company that employs children and refugees to build their AI. You are building a saner world just by not using YouTube. That's kinda hard to beat.
