The Centralization of a Decentralized Video Platform - A first Characterization of PeerTube

Publication
ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 54(4)
Abstract

PeerTube is an open-source video sharing platform built as a decentralized alternative to YouTube. With software like Mastodon and Friendica, PeerTube is part of a series of federated social media platforms built partly in response to growing concerns about centralized control and ownership of the incumbent ones. In this paper, we present the first characterization of PeerTube, including its underlying infrastructure and the content being shared on its network. Our findings reveal concerning trends toward centralization that echo patterns observed in other contexts, exacerbated by the limited degree of content replication. PeerTube instances are mostly located in North America and Western Europe, with about 70% hosted in Germany, the USA, and France, and over 50% hosted on the top 7 ***ASes. We also find that over 92% of videos are stored without any redundancy in spite of PeerTube’s native support for video redundancy.