2025-12-01 19:21:55
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I’m old enough to remember the days when people were beginning to recognize that putting all our video hosting eggs into the YouTube basket was a bad idea. People were just starting to realize that a single corporation having control over a huge portion of the Internet’s cultural history is a dead end. During this time many platforms spawned branding themselves as a better ‘YouTube Alternative’, only to struggle with little to no actual reach to the general public. Eventually people began to recognize that was truly needed was a “Decentralized YouTube” that could let everyone be in control of their own video platform.
In hindsight, even the very few people who are willing to escape Google’s walled-garden will actually venture away from corporate platforms. Since the beginning, I was skeptical that increasing the amount of corporations hosting the Internet’s video culture going from 1 to a dozen is itself a radical democratization of the information landscape. If anything, this shift has merely been an adaptation of the corporate media control system to dominate (and elevate) particular content niches.
The major competitors to YouTube are just that, competing at the same game. They are not truly any more interested in giving their audience a voice than Google is. While sincere attempts can begin with good intentions, the problem is that you can not dethrone Google without becoming Google. In fact Google couldn’t even be what it was without turning on their own stated principle of “Don’t be evil”.
Corporate video platforms are always going to need to use the finite space in their audience’s attention to market to them, this is why almost every ‘YouTube alternative’ has the same ‘featured page’ that I once remembered to be criticized as even YouTube going too far to push editorialized content on the public.
This is why there is such a radical distinction between the so-called ‘alternative media’ and actually independent voices. While Rumble tries to brand itself as an improvement to YouTube’s draconian speech crackdowns, it seems that it comes at the price of being inundated with advertising for sketchy supplement pushers, and dubious investment schemes. It’s worth noting that if you pay for the privilege, X now gives you the opportunity to serve non-trivial video content on that platform.
It seems that many have successfully escaped YouTube, but not corporate control over online expression. As they say “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”. The new paradigm is fundamentally the same as the old paradigm, just managed by a cartel instead of a single corporate entity. As far as I’m concerned the difference is negligible.
One advantage of time passing alone is that the three primary resources in cyberspace are much more inexpensive than in the past. The cost to store a personal collection of video at reasonable quality, and serve it over the web is constantly falling. One could argue we don’t even need a decentralized “YouTube alternative” because the open web is already well-equipped to address this. Thanks to HTML5 video is a first-class content form on the web that has many features. Many content management systems like Ghost or WordPress can include local videos on your sites, and static site generators are also perfectly able to include videos on even small sites. The simple fact is that the web doesn’t even really need centralized video hosts anymore, those willing to reclaim their own territory in cyberspace are able to use a wide variety of tools to serve their own video.
But the root of the issue ends up being reach. Hardly anyone wants to produce media to an audience of nobody. If the intention is to get the word out, or share with others, reach is certainly critical. Again, this is a circumstance that the open web already has a solution for. RSS is a fully decentralized system for media syndication and sharing. If more people fully embraced the open web and even more ambitiously, the social web (AKA the Fediverse) essentially all of the problems caused by corporate media control would be systematically eliminated. The problem is that people have been taught to expect all their online media in one place. The toil of navigating through different websites and apps is a tremendous hurdle for the public to overcome.
We’re always going to have to contend with smartphones as much as we may dread them. Yes, they are a beachhead for corporations to push products and surveillance on the people, but there’s also a reasons why people just can’t put them down. The vast majority of the public for a long period of time is going to be doing the majority of their computing on a smartphone such as an iPhone or Android device. Only the small minority of people who care about reasonable privacy and security guarantees will be running GrapheneOS. Perhaps the Librephone will eventually save us, or the public will mass abandon smartphones all-together, but I don’t anticipate that being anytime soon.
The problem isn’t just media being available, it also needs to be reasonably ‘within reach’ for people’s habits. Convenience is just a derogatory term for user experience innovation. Corporations have had the resources to reasarch, implement and refine, both helpful and dark patterns that shape how people interact with cyberspace. An interesting attempt to address this is Grayjay that aims to provide a “one stop shop” to the entire multimedia landscape of the web. Despite the many criticisms people have with FUTO and the fine details of how they license their software, I think this was a sincere attempt that should be learned from. That said, AntennaPod leverages RSS to effectively do what almost anyone would want out of decentralized media. Just give me a feed so I can watch what I want, when I want. I would go as far as to say that in a truly independent cyberspace, AntennaPod is all anyone would need. But people want more, they want interaction, they want robust discovery mechanisms, and they want an ability to conveniently post media. Thankfully there is such a solution PeerTube.
With the way the corporate media dominates the digital information landscape, one would be forgiven for presuming there was no actual solution. While some people may be able to read an entire Libre Solutions Network treatise on the mindset and long journey of making actual change, most people just want a simple solution they can use today to address their problems. Thankfully, that solution is actually here. By running or joining an independent PeerTube instance, you are directly liberating a portion of the online media landscape on behalf of others. With a relatively small investment in time, and resources individuals and communities can directly work to provide a truly better alternative to corporate video platforms.
It is a genuine shame that PeerTube isn’t more popular amongst those who crave a truly independent media. I personally feel responsible for not promoting PeerTube enough, and this piece is a small gesture to atone for that. It is my belief that dissidents across the political spectrum, and even the general public are “sleeping on” what is an immense game-changer when it comes to online media and entertainment. More adoption of PeerTube alone would drastically reduce the harmful impacts of algorithmic manipulation, privacy invasion, and the “dumbing down” of online media as a whole. This likely sounds ’too good to be true’ but the real catch is that we have to want it enough. We need to be willing to invest the effort and resources to build a better digital landscape, rather than wait for it to be provided for us.
PeerTube is not just a game-changer on the big picture, it’s a technical marvel demonstrating just how different online media can be. The user interface has all the features an ordinary person would expect, but also a lot more enhancements that make it a first-class video repository. Simple things like automatic transcription, compression to multiple different sizes, and even a mobile app are things that can make PeerTube more useful than simply having video files on your web site.
For those interested in running their own instance, PeerTube is an investment in a well-indexed video repository. I wholeheartedly believe that the future of online media and culture looks bright if people seize the opportunity to provide room for creatives and educators to share their work outside the pressures and influences of algorithmic manipulation and opaque monetization. PeerTube also supports a wide variety of ways to customize how your instance looks, so you can truly make it expressive to your needs. As a Free and Open Source (FOSS) project, with the right support, we can only expect PeerTube to get better and better over time. This can’t be said of corporate media platforms.
Love RSS feeds? PeerTube supports them out of the box. You can add any PeerTube channel to your AntenaPod app, or whatever RSS tool you use. But if you want actual engagement, rather than just a one-way conversation PeerTube is a full-fledged member of the Fediverse. This means that any “social web” application can comment on PeerTube videos. Reach both incoming and outgoing is greatly enhanced by this. But if that’s not enough decentralization for you, there’s a reason it’s called “PeerTube”.
PeerTube allows those watching the video to contribute bandwidth to each other. By “sharing the load” this can drastically reduce the bandwidth costs of serving videos in particular circumstances. This doesn’t eliminate all the costs, but is a significant way to “level the playing-field” for smaller operators. In previous versions this was done through WebTorrent but now has switched to WebRTC and HLS. In practice this has some trade-offs but I can definitely defend the change.
In my opinion, the biggest game-changer of PeerTube is that independent operators can finally break free of many of the incentives that fuel the ’enshittification’ of digital media. Without algorithms prioritizing particular video formats and length, people are free to create for quality rather than to publish. This can help work towards a radically different media landscape that lets people drive virality rather than corporate algorithms and government imperatives. It’s a relatively small thing, but PeerTube also features the addition of funding/donation information on a per video and a per channel basis, meaning that what’s possible in the future is unbounded with the right support.
Many of us lament the ’tik-tok’ brain and lack of attention span of the youth, if not the general public at large. But can we truly say we tried everything to ensure they inherit a better media landscape? Do we not have the responsibility to foster a culture that provides real meaningful alternatives to corporate slop? It is easy to critique others choices to validate our own decisions. I believe it is a duty of the modern person to proactively support building independent culture and its preservation. That said, we must also contend with the constraints and realities of our time. Because of this and all the above, I believe that PeerTube is an indispensable tool for building a better digital future. The sad fact of the matter is that many people are just waiting for cyberspace to become less hostile and predatory, but it falls to all of us to do what we can to change it.
I have been pleasantly surprised that even my relatively obscure project The Libre Solutions Network, gets a non-trivial amount of views via my own PeerTube Instance. When I compare view stats against the SubStack publication with over 1000 people signed-up, I am genuinely impressed that those following my projects over the open web will hit comparable watch time. What this tells me is that while you will certainly get higher surface engagement numbers on larger platforms, deep meaningful engagement is only to be found on the open web. Fostering a better digital culture requires us to make decisions with this in mind, and align our efforts accordingly.
This is fundamentally a collective action problem, not a technical one. Corporate media is entrenched because of massive network effects, but this is far from insurmountable. In a time where the plan seems to be trading the spark of human expression and creativity for regurgitated AI slop, quality and meaning are at a massive premium. The public is starved for authentic cultural expression and representation and there is so much potential in the tools we have to provide that. PeerTube is a real chance for us to experience something better than YouTube and its competitors ever could have been.
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Go to the website and learn more about PeerTube.
You can already start using PeerTube today by checking out these channels. You can bookmark them, use the app, or their subscribe via their feed.
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2025-11-29 07:47:15
This off-the-cuff recording is an attempt to share the much broader context behind my ongoing transformation. Now that I have accomplished enough that people say they regularly point to my example, I feel obligated to disclose the bigger fight taking place. My health changes have merely been a major objective in a broader emotional battle. This is an attempt to put into words the emotional turmoil behind how I got so big. This particular recording is a bit more intense than usual, so be advised of more difficult subject matter being discussed.
Unfortunately, I’m not likely to reach this year’s ‘greedy’ goal of losing 200lbs in 2025. I’ve got a month to go and with everything I have learned I don’t think I will be able to lose 40lbs in another month. But even being already 160lbs down for the year is still a massive hard-won victory. This new low puts me at almost 260lbs down total. By shedding all this extra weight, I’m finally at a point where the benefits are beginning to compound.
Despite a stubborn foot injury, getting around feels so much better. I can move a lot quicker than before and it feels very gratifying. Some of my small investments into building better habits are making things that would be very mentally and physically taxing feel much more within reach. I’m finding myself getting much better at making small investments in taking better care of myself, and feeling the gratifying sense of accomplishment when it pays off.
With most of the extreme health and mobility challenges behind me, I’m back to a familiar state. But a great deal has changed under the surface. These days, I genuinely feel like I am at a point where being at peace with myself is closer to the default than the exception. The regular positive interactions I’m having with people is comforting in a level that is hard to get in the moment, but I can certainly appreciate the cumulative effects.
It is very difficult to articulate, but I no longer feel like my mind is actively working against me. I am experiencing a shocking yet familiar sense in my mind that I can only concisely summarize as “I’m back!”. It feels like the fog of numbness and dread has lifted and I get to embrace my chance at life for all it is in both big and small ways.
The meat of this recording is where I try to articulate the ‘story behind the story’ of my health journey. Making new friends lately has had me face regret and loss I didn’t realize I was burying. I miss many of my old friends so much more now that I have gotten to know other excellent people on a deeper level as I’ve slowly and gradually come out of various forms of isolation. It wouldn’t be me if this reflection didn’t include my thoughts on how it all connects to the wider world. The more I think about the long arc of this path I’ve walked, the more I understand things about myself I took for granted. I am now at a point where I am ignited with a passion for sharing much more than just the physical changes that brought me to this point.
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2025-11-21 20:49:08
In this particular recording I have decided not to remove the background noise, in particular each step through the snow/ice/slush. I hope this isn’t too bothersome, but if it is, consider this a warning.
I am very happy to report I’ve achieved one of my major strength goals. For quite some time now I’ve been specifically focused on the overhead press and I’m overjoyed to be able to lift 135lbs. A few months ago this was something I struggled to even attempt, so this is a very concrete sign to me that I am continuing to make strength progress on the way down. Getting stronger, and feeling stronger has done remarkable things to my day-to-day mood over time.
My next strength goal is to be able to bench 2 plates (225lbs) and I think I’m well on the way to being able to do that. I think it will take quite a while to build up to a 3 plate squat and a 4 plate deadlift. I think people at the gym may be right that these targets are fairly arbitrary. If nothing else I think striving for 1/2/3/4 is at least a direction to focus on. That said I definitely intend on continuing to progress my overhead press, which is presently my favorite lift. I think I need to come up with strength goals for different movements like pulling. Currently I can do assisted pull-ups with the help of 200lbs, so it will be very gratifying to be able to work up to un-assisted pull-ups.
Yesterday I weighted in at 320lbs, which means I’ve lost just over 255lbs! To celebrate this particular milestone I decided to for the first time ever use a whole-body profile photo in a bunch of places. I am beginning to feel proud about how far I’ve come, but I am still primarily motivated to keep pushing towards my ambitious 15% body fat target.
As I’ve continued to make progress, I’ve begun to appreciate just how ambitious that long-term target actually is. I finally understand why people would look perplexed when I was at my highest telling others that this was my goal. Now I realize I was the biggest guy in the gym telling people in relatively good shape “I’m going to be leaner than YOU someday!” 🤣 Hopefully someday I can make good on early Gabriel’s optimistic promises.
Sadly as you can see my 2nd arm wasn’t able to fit onto the scanning bed. While I meet the weight requirements for a DEXA, apparently I still don’t meet the size requirements. All the same, I will be very happy to have this to compare with another scan near my long-term weight target. According to this scan I’m at ~41% body fat, which is actually well below what my ’napkin-math’ estimate of 50%. It seems I was too pessimistic about how much lean mass I’m carrying.
Due to the arm being cut off, I am a bit disappointed that this won’t quite be a 1-to-1 comparison, but overall I fully expect the changes to be fairly clear regardless.
After the updates I share some recent reflections on how I believe that “dieting is just a collection of skills.” Many dieting tips are valuable in pursuit of developing or leveraging particular skills that may or may not factor well into a particular person’s life. I wholeheartedly believe that there are essential dieting skills that are broadly applicable to almost everyone’s situation, but there are many particular tools that suit those skills.
Social connection
Stress management
Nutrition
Cooking
Such a resource may exist, but I think an invaluable resource for helping people reverse particularly dire weight circumstances would be radically different from what I have seen. It could focus much less on specific dietary recommendations, but more on how to build these and other skills from the ground up. It seems that in the modern environment, we may underestimate how many ‘basic life skills’ can fade away if we are not careful. In this micro-rant I share about how much I think social isolation and atomization contributes to people’s health deteriorating. These days, I am more sure that we humans are social creatures, and that means that while the major factors for personal health are individual, that is far from the entire picture.
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2025-11-16 05:08:44
I hope you’ll enjoy this stream-of-consciousness reflection on the last crazy year as I prepare for 2026. Apologies for the lack of a write-up, I am crunched for time at the moment.
I hope this before and after makes up for it!
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2025-11-08 23:52:14
I’m rolling with the punches as I try to refine my plans for the new year. I hope you enjoy this off-the-cuff reflection on where I’m at now and what I’m focusing on moving forward. I am thrilled to report my new low of 327.1. I’m quite happy to have gotten below the three-thirties which were a particularly difficult range for me.
A lot of positive attention has come my way because of how radically different I look these days, but I admit to being in the midst of some difficult feelings in this recording. I wish growing was always fun and exciting, but I’m hoping to make the best of it even when it is challenging.
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2025-11-03 04:16:37
I apologize for the audio quality of this particular recording, it didn’t turn out quite as I had hoped, but I believe it was still worth sharing an update.
Things have been a bit difficult lately because I majorly injured my foot over a week ago. I clumsily dropped a 45lb plate on it while unloading a leg press machine. It seems I am to endure weeks of of pain for a moment of exhausted carelessness. Quite a painful lesson in diligent and careful moving of weights. Despite that, I have finished the first iteration of my 2026 exercise plan. I am already beginning to ramp up towards being able to stick to it and I am excited for the gains to come.
The first mini-rant of this recording I talk about how I think many things that are often discussed as ‘genetics’ in health and fitness circles seem to cover what I would call “external lifestyle factors”. This navel-gazing hair-split is about recognizing the distinction between inherited constraints on health that are not explicitly encoded in genes but rather inherited socially. This would include things like ACE (adverse childhood events) and other direct impacts on quality of life.
The second mini-rant is a sappy one about the importance of cultivating skill as individuals and as a society. As covered in my Digital Autonomy & The Arts Series I touch on how I am concerned that generative AI may undermine people’s desire to develop important skills, and for people to generally devalue human ingenuity as a whole.
Lastly I finish up talking about a great experience I had at a ‘meet & greet’ lately. I had the thrilling opportunity to talk to one of my personal heroes. After a very nice back-and-forth I was encouraged to explicitly talk about how the Canadian response to the Covid Crisis played a role in making my dire health situation get a great deal worse.
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