this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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I'd like some feedback on a YouTube decentralization project I'm working on: Torrent-Tube (github.com)
submitted 23 hours ago by dessalines@lemmy.ml to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

top 19 comments
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[–] AstroLightz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

A question I like to ask a lot whenever I see a new project that is similar to other existing or popular projects:

  • Why should I use this over XYZ?
  • What does this project do differently than XYZ?

If a developer can answer these questions, it tells me they have a clear picture of what their project is and should be.

So, I ask the same to you:

  • Why should I use this over yt-dlp, Piped, Invidious, etc?
  • What does this do differently than the other projects?
[–] tired_fedora@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Could one integrate this with apps like NextTube or PipePipe? I.e., When I search for a video on those apps, they search the torrent index first, then search Frama Tube / PeerTube second, then search YouTube-proper last. While I'm streaming a video from any of these sources, I am then also downloading and seeding it to the torrent network and I keep seeding the last videos I watched on a rolling basis until an allocated memory space on my disk is full and the oldest or least requested video in that local buffer is deleted to make space for new; while I'm on Wifi to save mobile data? I think providing such seamless integration is the best way to get this space densely populated enough to be useful.

[–] 45o3b@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 hours ago

I like your logic here. Torrent index -> alternative platforms -> YT proper.

Assuming the torrent index becomes decentralized, there are really two categories where it makes sense to build this in:

  1. The YouTube frontends, as you mention

  2. The self-hosted downloaders that already exist, like Tube Archivist

I think the second category is where you get all the seeding traction. Sure, it would be great if the Android frontends also participate, but there are thousands of NAS devices that are already downloading YouTube videos for a single user. If there was an addon that allowed all of these users to share content automatically, I think there would be a lot of buy in / seeding.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Would be awesome if we could somehow get a decentralized video back-end for Lemmy. Videos are currently still a large issue for uploading here.

[–] gila@hexbear.net 1 points 6 hours ago

I guess the main issue i'd encounter is syncing watched progress metadata with YouTube servers, which Grayjay & Smarttube both optionally do

[–] SamuelEllis@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

While moving video files to torrents improves distribution resilience, relying on a centralized search index like torrents-csv reintroduces a single point of control and potential censorship. 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.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 hours ago

I really like this idea, and I suppose it could also be built to include videos from other video hosting cites as well in the future.

Do you think this could become popular enough it to be useful? Public BitTorrent trackers for other media are barely seeded as it is and they have been active for decades. Why would people want to seed media they can watch for free on youtube? (to be clear I understand why but it's difficult to get enough others to understand something like this.)

Another issue is if it does get popular enough to become useful I could imagine this being a major target from YouTube, or do I misunderstand the copyright laws? Actually considering the db is just one massive torrent.csv file I guess you can't really sensor that. Although I'm not sure if a copyright troll issue could arise.

Also that 38 MiB csv file is insane.

[–] Niquarl@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Considering so many torrents seem to die I doubt this would catch on for anybody but the biggest youtubers... Unless you can get those authors to join in this.

It would need to hit a pretty large critical mass to start being possible. I see you also posted with datahoarders, that's the only hope I guess.

Might I recommend you add some kind of discovery feed ? I wanted to search for something but I couldn't find anything, unfortunately in your search engine.

[–] thanksforreading@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 hours ago

People upload to Youtube so they can extract a small share of the rents from surveillance capitalism. If you don't solve that problem then nothing will change.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 9 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I think this is pretty clever, kind of like the old Popcorn Time app for YouTube.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 6 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Thx! For the record, this doesn't cover the viewing part, which would require a torrent app and a local media player of your choosing. Any should work tho.

edit: I'll add that to the instructions.

[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 9 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Will this let me bypass those "login to verify age" walls? I hate those.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 10 points 22 hours ago

Torrents don't have those, so ya.

[–] grandel@lemmy.ml 6 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Nice, sounds a bit like PeerTube if I am not mistaken. Is the difference that you don't have to upload a video to make it available in a decentralised matter?

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 11 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

The main difference from peertube, is that peertube is based on webtorrents (which after many years, its been shown that ppl don't use them), whereas this is based on regular torrents.

You still do need to create a torrent for the videos and seed them, if one doesn't exist already. But this has the possibility of decentralizing video hosting away from youtube.

I'll be using this process for every video I watch now.

[–] Sims@lemmy.ml 9 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Any way to combine yours/ordinary torrents and peertube web-torrents, so the systems can support each other ?

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 4 points 19 hours ago

The majority of torrenters don't use webtorrents, and I'm only grabbing the most popular trackers for building these.

[–] grandel@lemmy.ml 6 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Sounds neat! I look forward to trying it out myself shortly. Thank you for sharing.

[–] grandel@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 hours ago

@dessalines@lemmy.ml mktorrent doesn't seem to work on windows. Is there an alternative you would consider or can suggest I try?