GitHub - dessalines/torrent-tube: A set of tools to help decentralize youtube videos.
github.com
A set of tools to help decentralize youtube videos. - dessalines/torrent-tube

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/49015971

YouTube is still one of the major points of centralization on the internet, so I’ve been brainstorming ways around the problem.

From the readme:

Torrent-Tube is a set of tools to help decentralize YouTube videos, by moving them to torrents, which can be shared by many people. It includes:

  • A Torrent-Tube search site which searches the Torrents-csv search engine to see if the given YouTube video already exists, and is being seeded.
    • It does this by extracting the YouTube [VIDEO_ID] from a link, which you can also do manually if you like (IE, the text after watch?v=...).
  • A script to download, and create torrent files from YouTube videos, with a uniform naming style and format, taken from TheFrenchGhosty’s YouTube-DL-Scripts.
  • You will need to upload these torrent files yourself to a service (details below), and seed them.

Torrent-Tube Search

In the future, it may be possible to create a browser plugin that checks a video link that you’re currently watching for existing torrents.

Create torrent script

Requirements

Instructions

Copy a YouTube video URL.

# Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/dessalines/torrent-tube

# Run the script
./create_torrent.sh [YOUTUBE_URL]

The video will download, and is saved in the videos folder. The torrent file is saved in the torrents folder.

Add the torrent to your torrent app, such as qbittorrent.

  • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOP
    1·
    17 hours ago

    To truly decentralize the metadata layer, consider whether the search infrastructure itself can be federated or if the client should handle local indexing to eliminate dependency on any external discovery service.

    A federated search service / index (especially unmoderated) could quickly fill up with spam. So at least the torrent additions / adders themselves need to be vetted and trustworthy for a search to work correctly.

    And of course torrents-csv doesn’t have to be the only place hosting magnet links. They could easily be posted to any federated app, like a lemmy community or mastodon also.