What is DTube
Cold off of my takedown of Minds.com there comes DTube. A social media site that aims to take down YouTube by not having an algorithm. One thing I didn’t mention or didn’t care about is Minds point system was converted watered down and converted to a cryptocurrency. I have a certain animosity to cryptocurrency because they drive up the prices on graphics cards and I am probably past the point that I should be building a new computer. Other than that, the stuff is in a bubble that will burst as soon as any kind of government starts to regulate it, which I have nothing but pity for. I only bring these things up to load your expectations for DTube.
My model for a YouTube successor largely comes from Foldable Ideas video on Vidme or Why Platforms Aren’t Your Friends. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3snVCRo_bI) DTube has the selling points that every video is monetized by watch time, there is no algorithm, and they are not YouTube. This is a shortlist, that I had to do some digging to get. Shortlists are only enticing to the kind of people who are blind to the depth of the strengths of YouTube. If there are more positives, they need to get the word out and cultivate a thoughtful audience, otherwise, the service will only work for the furthering of their cryptocurrency.
So, the nitty-gritty that gets overlooked in some newer explanations of cryptocurrency is are its core every bit or coin is an algorithm. A long complicated math problem that people set up computers to solve or “mine.” Every problem that is solved starts the next problem which will be harder and take longer to solve. All the computers that do this mining are connected and track and check each other’s work. This is called the blockchain and is how cryptocurrency handles legitimacy because it is all publicly secured. Mining cryptocurrency is why the values of graphics cards have gone up, because their processors are the best at solving those kinds of problems, and people, including incorporated investors, have started investing a lot of money on making machines to mine. This is what DTube is doing under the hood.
DTube is using streaming video to anchor their blockchain. As you watch a video, your computer is processing the video stream and the complicated algorithm that unlock and secure the cryptocurrency. This is a significant change to the streaming video model. It probably isn’t as effective as the dedicated mining machines but it gives the streaming of every video an inherent value based on the value of the cryptocurrency. A value that can be applied regardless of content.
As far as I can tell, the only community controls are the fact the users need to submit a phone number in order to sign up, which will hamper the number of dummy accounts that can be used by harassers and spammers. Without thought out community grooming, you get the uninviting company like nazis and the kind of people who are comfortable with nazis. It all depends on the creators’ outreach which seems to be zero, and their desire to curb undesirables which I have no idea about. Mechanically, it doesn’t matter what is uploaded and who is watching it. So, the creators might not care.
This style of funding where the users mine coin for the site and the site assigns watched video with a value cuts out part of the need for advertising, yes. But may favor longer videos. Which isn’t bad in itself but odd quirks to a preferred kind of content in a system, which is why people are mad at the YouTube algorithm in the first place.
The other big selling point is that DTube does not use an algorithm to promote or suggest videos. The algorithm is necessary on YouTube because of just how many videos are uploaded to the website. It is a system that analysis videos from a system-level and pairs it with other videos on size, title, tags, and how other viewers watched that video, for the purpose of finding ways to make people watch videos for as long as possible and as many videos as possible.
This is why any tweak to the system makes so many video makers panic because all of a sudden their numbers of views or watch minutes can drop. If the system doesn’t deliver notices, there is no way that video makers can get their videos seen. I’m guessing that this is what DTube wants people to think about when they say that they don’t have an algorithm. I think the statement is technically a lie. They must have a system or want a system in order to suggest more videos for people to watch in order to keep their blockchain working and having access to all of those video cards. It is a lie I can stand if it means that their algorithm just won’t do the bad things.
I’m reluctant to dive into this site. DTube is upfront about their blockchain use in the already data demanding video sites but I don’t know that there is anything keeping other sites like facebook or YouTube from tying in a blockchain to the code of their site and sucking up visitors data and electricity. It doesn’t solve the instrumentality problems of websites, advertisers, and privacy. I don’t know how receptive these kinds of people will be to a community or if it will be possible to make communities like what has sprung from YouTube. They might just be selling the image of profitability to the kinds of people who are not profitable on YouTube. They may not be the kind who want to solve problems other than the ones that unlock virtual coins.
My Minds Piece (https://medium.com/@thesugarray/just-some-of-the-problems-with-minds-com-the-worst-social-media-site-a4cf9b07e875)
