bitview's unused potential

[soapfriendo]

recently while browsing neocities i discovered bitview, which a lotta ppl already know as a site similar to spacehey in which it mirrors late 2000s youtube, pretty cool and i was considering signing up for it....until i found out nobody is in it besides a buncha 13 year olds poorly reenacting old youtube, even impersonating youtubers who were well known at the time, and that kinda got me thinkin.......there's a lotta people on spacehey who ACTUALLY use the site to post stuff and talk to other ppl and i think it would be cool if bitview ended up with the same typa ppl who actually use bitview as a video sharing site and not a haha funny 2000s memefest

basically, bitview has potential to be the video sharing site of the web revival/old web community, but the only people active in it atm aren't interested in REVIVAL as much as they're into half-assed web reenactment

[wetnoodle]

Oh wow I've never seen bitview! That would be so cool if it does start to take off more. I know a good bunch of people have already migrated to peertube or piped as a replacement but the more options available the better!

[georgemoody]

Seems like the same people also got a similar mirror for twitter: https://blips.club

[Melooon]

Im always a bit disappointed by sites like this  We (as in the indie and small web) totally need sites that offer things like video hosting, but I think this community deserves better than another 2006 website clone.

There is so much room to come up with something more exciting and unique instead of carbon copying a site that's long since come and gone. Why not make a video site that's like a virtual video store where you find tapes to put in a player? Why not make videos that float around in orbs and you pop them to play or stick them together to make playlists. There are so many more options than what was possible in 2006, so why not use them!

I know how hard it is to make a small service like this and that can be a limiting factor, but I also know how much effort goes into something like this; if you are gonna put in that effort, why not put it into something fresh and exciting?

Ok that's my rant    and I dunno what the goal of this site is, so I don't wanna be too disparaging; it is what it is and it's clearly great at that; but web revival sites can be so much more than imitation.

[soapfriendo]

Im always a bit disappointed by sites like this  We (as in the indie and small web) totally need sites that offer things like video hosting, but I think this community deserves better than another 2006 website clone.

There is so much room to come up with something more exciting and unique instead of carbon copying a site that's long since come and gone. Why not make a video site that's like a virtual video store where you find tapes to put in a player? Why not make videos that float around in orbs and you pop them to play or stick them together to make playlists. There are so many more options than what was possible in 2006, so why not use them!

I know how hard it is to make a small service like this and that can be a limiting factor, but I also know how much effort goes into something like this; if you are gonna put in that effort, why not put it into something fresh and exciting?

Ok that's my rant    and I dunno what the goal of this site is, so I don't wanna be too disparaging; it is what it is and it's clearly great at that; but web revival sites can be so much more than imitation.

tbh i totally get what u mean. i'm the kinda guy who makes do with what there is to offer since i can't rly do anything abt it, but even then one of the biggest things that this community lacks is interesting sites that can be used to post stuff on. personal sites are cool n all but when it comes to the social aspect of the indie web?? nobody pays attention to it, and when they do they don't put any effort into making it unique in the way that personal sites are. in return that causes ppl to have to make do with stuff like twitter clones, which there already is too much of

[MrsMoe]

tbh i totally get what u mean. i'm the kinda guy who makes do with what there is to offer since i can't rly do anything abt it, but even then one of the biggest things that this community lacks is interesting sites that can be used to post stuff on. personal sites are cool n all but when it comes to the social aspect of the indie web?? nobody pays attention to it, and when they do they don't put any effort into making it unique in the way that personal sites are. in return that causes ppl to have to make do with stuff like twitter clones, which there already is too much of

I feel this so much. I love Neocities and this forum so much, but it'd be neat if we had our own little sites for other uses (video-sharing, file hosting,  art posting, etc). I had a hard time committing to alternative sites due to their lack of content compared to the corporate giants (like Youtube or Deviantart), but I'd be more than willing to use one if it was strongly attached to this community.

[shevek]

one of the biggest things that this community lacks is interesting sites that can be used to post stuff on. personal sites are cool n all but when it comes to the social aspect of the indie web??

but it'd be neat if we had our own little sites for other uses (video-sharing, file hosting,  art posting, etc). I had a hard time committing to alternative sites due to their lack of content compared to the corporate giants

Careful what you wish for

I agree that video hosting is severely lacking, especially since Neocities doesn't support it either. There really needs to be an alternative there that can be used.
However personally I would caution against just recreating the web we are disentangling from, similar to what Melon said, but not just for design reasons. What's the saying again, with insanity being to try the same things expecting a different outcome?

The problem in my view is not (just) who operates the bigger sites and their unethical actions, so another group recreating and owning an alternative that offers the same/similar content to consume doesn't change underlying problems. The system and environment helped make the biggest sites what they are today: The costs attached and how our society tends to solve that under capitalism. At some point, a small site simply becomes so big and has such a mass of content and users to serve, that it just eats money and is not sustainable by the creator. How we tend to solve that in our system is tracking to sell data, ads, subscriptions, design changes to drive engagement or keep ad buyers happy, locking features behind premium suddenly, VC money, etc. which are all negatively contributing to how the site is.

We lived in a golden age of extremely well-funded sites for a while that were very usable, comfortable, and didn't employ as much coercive monetization practices because they got their money elsewhere. Upload for free, use everything for free, be relatively unbothered while using it.
That well has run dry, and while we got used to that golden age and see it again in smaller sites like cohost, spacehey, and other alternatives promising to do "social media but good" with lots of content to consume and the opportunity to be social (allegedly), it is inevitable that if one alternative becomes the preferred and popular site again, that the cycle will repeat, because the environment it has to thrive in hasn't changed and more users always cost more money.

The Fediverse, which can recreate some of it looks- and contentwise, has its own issues - instance hosting isn't for everyone, so you'll often rely on others to do so. What if they take theirs down and don't give you time to migrate? What about instances blocking each other? What about complying with GDPR and other regulation, especially in regards to deletion of posts and profiles? How much do you trust your instance hoster with your data? What about content moderation around hate speech, gore etc.?

This doesn't even mention the addictive design choices that became normalized to drive engagement and therefore monetization, which alternatives often copy or at least somewhat emulate because users have gotten used to it and they expect it on an alternative. The alternative also has to stay competitive and keep your attention as well, if not better, than the big sites - otherwise they're no competition at all, and users will leave. That means alternatives likely never (fully) tackle the issues around likes and followers, endless scrolling, doomscrolling, notifications, clickbait etc. because they have to employ those themselves. I mean, that's also at the core of people craving content to consume, right? Explore where this feeling comes from.

So I'd like to point out that the way the web revival moves everything to each personal site and not in a content aggregator or social media site is basically intentional - we are reclaiming, not recreating. The content is yours to present how you want to, not in constraints of some site attached to its branding, but your own site. If one hoster goes down or kicks you off, you have your website files on your computer and just put it up again as it was on another hoster. You delete what you wanna delete. The tracking concerns are different here.

Similarly, the content is to consume how you want to, via RSS feeds and several services that change or add to how you can customize and consume them. RSS feed support is lacking a bit on Neocities, I agree it's something that needs to be pushed more. But the added friction of having to check specific sites to add them to your feed or check them out manually gives it not just the exploratory character the internet used to have, but is also needed for many people to have cues to log off and do something else - online as a dedicated activity, not the default you remove yourself from sometimes. Since nothing will automatically fill an endless feed for you, there is an end to the activity.

And finally I wanna pose the question, were you really social on social media? How much of it was lurking the feed, occasionally liking or reblogging/retweeting something silently, and that's it? How was the % between that and a conversation underneath a post or DMing a person? I honestly assume a lot of people on this forum have been more social here than elsewhere on the internet.

[PurpleHello98]

I know! I used to use it pretty regularly but sadly, a lot of it's just "hehe look at this I'm so old YouTube", some of which is good, but I'd like it if there were more content that wasn't just trying to be jokey. I think it has a lot of potential!

[Memory]

And finally I wanna pose the question, were you really social on social media? How much of it was lurking the feed, occasionally liking or reblogging/retweeting something silently, and that's it? How was the % between that and a conversation underneath a post or DMing a person? I honestly assume a lot of people on this forum have been more social here than elsewhere on the internet.

I feel this. Usually, I'm more of a lurker on "social" media. It's only this forum that I'm particularly active on because it's smaller and a whole lot more contained than say... Youtube or twitter. I don't comment or post on any site, especially youtube. I'm there to consume content all alone LOL.

Excluding this forum, I've never created new content or added on to old content. Which is part of why I left social media, right? The nonstop drag of consume consume consume rather than thoughtful interaction, creation, and addition.

All of this to say I like your reply to this post and agree with it.

[wygolvillage]

Honestly I think having more youtube alternatives in general is sorely needed, it feels like youtube has really monopolized online video content. I might check Bitview out next time I want to post a video of some sort!

[Memory]

I know this may sound boring, but a lot of these "old school recreation" websites are poorly made and administered since running a online service is obviously very hard, which means some are barely functional and are very easy target for hackers, predators, trolls, spammers, and bad people in general due to low budget.
Also, even if someone with high budget tried to recreate the classic version of YouTube for example, it would still lack the context in which made classic YouTube so great: An online plataform where you can upload videos and watch anything you may want? In 2005 that was revolutionary, but now it would only spawn for a small period of time and die after some time into obscurity.
I belive we should support original pre-existing independent spaces rather than recreating old ones for the sake of nostalgia, look at Newgrounds for example: It's not YouTube for sure, but it's been active since 2001 and it still remains a very open space for artistic expression. Or at least try to create new ones from the ground up, Neocities is by itself an example.
Just my opinion