Monetization | A list of ethical and privacy-respecting ways Peertubers can make money

If someone chooses to monetize their videos, what ethical options do they have? Let's suggest ways (technical and non technical) for Peertubers to earn money.

First lets include the official suggestion from joinpeertube.org:

  the solution proposed to people who upload videos is to use the "support" button under the video. This button displays a frame in which people who upload videos can display text, images, and links freely. For example, it’s possible to put a link to Patreon, Tipeee, Paypal, Liberapay (or any other solution) there.

A suggestion I could think of:

• Find a website/platform where advertisers meet directly with content creators (Peertubers). Next offer them to promote their product in videos you make and see how much they can pay you (per video).

What's yours? Let's expand the list.

⚠️ What we probably want to avoid, is a monetization system that favors the users of big instances. This will kill decentralization. A PeerTuber should never have to think like: "If I join this big xyz instance I will make much more money as opposed to joining a recently created instance."

[Nutomic]

Another option would be Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency. The good thing about that is that all the software is open source, and easy to automate. The simplest way to implement this would be just show an address where users can send money to. Ideally it would create a new address for each donation for privacy reasons (so it is harder to tell how much money someone received, or who they received money from).

Another option would be to integrate Liberapay support.

[axelsimon]

I think cleanly integrating things such as Liberapay, Patreon and the likes, and actually working with those entities to make sure it works well, could make a huge difference.

Peertube as a global platform will only be as successful as it is successful with content creators.
Without content creators wanting to use it, it will essentially be a backup solution for Youtube videos and the playground for a few convinced video makers.

Cryptocurrency integration, while interesting on paper, is not likely to be useful anytime soon, given most people have no idea how to use Bitcoin, Ether or anything else.

I agree encouraging ads would be counter-productive, as this is not the Internet PeerTube is pushing for.
However, Read the Docs explanation about "ethical ads" might still be worth the read and consideration.

[therahedwig]

Patreon has an API that can be integrated with, but liberapay and open collective do not. Nor does kofi. Liberapay explains that they are not a 'paywall' service like they imply Patreon is, but a donation platform(you're not supossed to be giving perks to people when they donate as that can be seen as selling a service instead).

For someone to self-host a paywall service, they'd proly have to implement a customer relation manager(like civicrm) to keep track of their contacts, implement a payment provider to get money, and finally get peertube to give access to content depending on the state of a contact in the CRM...

So, to be able to implement a paywall like system peertube by itself would need to have both the ability to set permission to view on certain videos(or at the very least have a list of people to notify for certain videos), as well as API to control that programmatically(or for all videos of a certain type in a channel). I suspect this is also necessary for Patreon integration or any other such service.

You could extend this to little medals/ribbons etc for commenters who are supporting the show financially.

Of course, looking at this I feel the instinct wriggle that better moderation needs to be done first, especially things like a channel giving other people the ability to moderate a channel's community, as this is really the biggest time-sink for any moderately popular artist on social media, but this is a completely different topic.

[elevenpassin]

#1521 (comment)

[therahedwig]

Given the recent weird thing youtube is doing where it is demonitising channels because they might be advertiser unfriendly, I think it might be worth it to think about how an alternative approach to this can be handled.

First things first, marketting people are people too. They want to do work and tell their boss they did work good. So there is a market for making things easy on marketting people. The youtube issues right now is that youtube is not able to garantuee that adverts appear on wholesome channels so that people will not associate the brand with horrible things(horrible videos, horrible people in the comments) happening on the channel.

One of the main things about the fediverse is that moderation is human. Decentralization makes this feasible. So, technically speaking, a peertube instance can actually make a promise towards advertisers saying 'this is an instance only for children's videos', 'this is an instance only for technology', 'this is an instance only for art' and that the terms of service are followed very very closely. The ability to say this is super prestigious, and I think peertube instances could ask more money than the equivelant youtube video due this.

It is also important that peertube instances ask for more money, because there's a reason youtube doesn't do proper human moderation: it is expensive.

So, then, thinking in terms what is technically needed for this:

• Integration with Matomo(Add Matomo support #1385 ). Statistics are necessary for the advertisers to understand how useful it will be to advertise on these channels.
• The ability to have short videos before/between/after the main video.
• The ability for users to define 'commercial breaks'
• The ability to get some anonymous statistics for these. (Views, how long it was played, etc)

Now, for the ads themselves, they might either... come from a 3rd party, or come from an instance pool of ads.

3rd party adverts would be more in line with peertube's current stance towards advertisement("er, make a plugin"). There would need to be some kind of service that allows receiving info about videos and sending statistics towards such a service.

An instance pool on the other hand would be closer full integration, but there is a very good argument to be made for this: The less middlemen between the advertiser and the video creator, the more the video creator has power to negotiate a fair price. If you have a 3rd party system, the 3rd party could turn out to be something big like google, who'd benefit from having super low prices for everyone and for hiding to advertisers where their videos are going to end up. But not every video creator is equal, advertisers want the channels which are popular and are well moderated.

I think we should keep a sharp eye on what is possible to ensure that these super valuable channels(where people work hard to output quality content and keep a civil atmosphere) have a strong position when negotiating versus advertisers, because advertisers want to be able to share in the cultural and social capital these channels have accumulated, and I think channels should be rewarded for that.

Sorry if this comes across as a bit rambly, but I really wanted to get that last paragraph across. It is not in the favor of advert giants to let this negotiation be possible, and I would like video creators to not have to advertise for a pittance, much like I wouldn't want to see illustrators work for 'exposure'.

[Booteille]

I would prefer to avoid totally any form of advertisement.
I think this encourage the marketing and I think it's a terrible thing.

Enabling any form of advertisement would inevitably lead to derives, I think. Where channels would just upload a lot of shorts videos just to get as much as money as they can. We saw that with YouTube.
I don't want to have the same schema with PeerTube.

I think the more ethical approach is something already said on this topic: Having the possibility to directly give money to instances owner and video creators.
Having something integrated (with addons) would be the best scenario. With the possibility for instances owner to display publicly how much they need and to automatically give them fees when paying creators.

[ROBERT-MCDOWELL]

an who will judge if a channel, video or comment is horrible or not? the minister of conscience?
YT started already an Owelian insanity, so now you want peertube doing the same? well, sad times....

[zicmama]

You could use Duniter Libre Currency! Each Peertube Node would have 2 Ḡ1 wallet filled with an initial amount. Then each actions in Peertube could initiate 0,01 Ḡ1 transfer +/- beetween wallets with Metadata as Comment.

There is python API like https://git.duniter.org/clients/python/duniterpy

If you want to know more about "Monnaie Libre" project?
https://monnaie-libre.fr

[Booteille]

You could use Duniter Libre Currency! Each Peertube Node would have 2 Ḡ1 wallet filled with an initial amount. Then each actions in Peertube could initiate 0,01 Ḡ1 transfer +/- beetween wallets with Metadata as Comment.

There is python API like https://git.duniter.org/clients/python/duniterpy

If you want to know more about "Monnaie Libre" project?
https://monnaie-libre.fr

I am not an expert about cryptocurrencies but does it work in the same way as Bitcoin? Needing miners calculate things to generate money?

Because it seems to be extremely polluting (because it asks a lot of energy) and I don't think PeerTube should be associated with this kind of practices.

But if it's energy-friendly why not!

[zicmama]

I am not an expert about cryptocurrencies but does it work in the same way as Bitcoin? Needing miners calculate things to generate money?

Because it seems to be extremely polluting (because it asks a lot of energy) and I don't think PeerTube should be associated with this kind of practices.

But if it's energy-friendly why not!

This is energy efficient, because there is no competition for mining blocks (and no token reward), members are forging new blocks in a peaceful equivalent way and generate an equal part of Libre Currency every day as everyone.
See details http://duniter.org/

[Booteille]

Okay. Glad to read that! I'll read further about it!

[elevenpassin]

I totally agree with @Booteille

I don't think advertisements are good for Peertube's ecosystem. Instead, I prefer the patreon/librepay method of supporting your favourite channels via monthly, one time and yearly subscriptions will go a long way! Advertisements can easily mess up the whole ecosystem and push the whole peertube ecosystem towards youtube's hell of attention craving ecosystem. I also fear that advertisements will inevitably also hit the roots of Peertube's development & will likely effect the course of Peertube over time.

[therahedwig]

Coming back to this again:

Thinking about paywalls, what might also be interesting, and needs a bit of work on peertube's side:

Instead of accessing the latest video over a paywall, rather, access the archives. A video maker would just upload their videos, and the latest video would be watchable for free, but archive access requires subscription.

This is similar to how broadcast tv has worked for years, and we know that fans of a show will want access to previous versions.

This will require Peertube to be able to limit access to a once public video reliably, which is tricky with federation.

[elevenpassin]

@therahedwig I am attracted to the inverted version of this model. Think paid latest sessions, and eventually they become cheaper, and then free. So content which is in demand is at a higher cost and if you want to watch something for free you'll have to wait for the demand to go down?