now on neocities!!!
https://sgtcharlynne.neocities.org/videosharing
We really need somewhere to share our videos.
Many people like myself hate YouTube because of the increasing ad intrusions and its policies way more stricter than cable TV. While we seek alternatives, the options are almost entirely dead ends. Social media ain't for us, and other video platforms are fucked over or plagued by extremist nutjobs. Even finding a good Peertube instance is hard. So if we're struggling to find a good one to upload videos, maybe we can consider creating our own websites instead.
Thankfully, it is easy to do with Neocities or Nekoweb, along with numerous webmaster resources. To meet the need for sharing videos, we can embed them or provide links for file downloads on our websites, even create a comment system. While others are lucky enough to have their own domain and resources to self-host their websites and videos, most of us don't get to yet, as hosting videos costs money, and learning to self-host can be challenging or frustrating. There is a cheaper solution which involves linking from file-sharing services. I've explored them and found a few free ones that meet the standards of being reliable hosts that don't require a premium subscription for more storage.
https://archive.org/
The Internet Archive is exactly what its name suggests: a platform that allows people to upload and preserve media and literature. Even if you only have the option to make items public, which is required for a preservation website, it's a mostly durable site.
https://buzzheavier.com/
Buzzheavier is a purely simple file sharing service. While Internet Archive offers the option to download items via torrent, Buzzheavier can also have torrents for uploaded files, which provides additional download methods. Another advantage is that it has mirror websites, such as flashbang(dot)sh and trashbytes(dot)net, in case one of them experiences downtime.
https://filehaus.su/
file.haus is very similar to Buzzheavier down to the torrent upload option and the mirrors. (filehaus[dot]top and filehaus[dot]pk) It also has a Tor mirror. (fileha3hjvudqs2moembtaegnpjo5ptec3tomf5dlxx6ydwtajkkahyd[dot]onion)
One notable difference about this site is that it's hosted outside the US so that there will be little to no DMCA misfortunes, which I find very neat.
https://filegarden.com/
Filegarden is another simple file sharing service. Despite its 100MB limit for each file, it's very useful for hosting small videos, and also images for art galleries. Plus, you still have a big enough storage to upload stuff.
https://abyss.to/
Abyss is yet another video hosting service for people to manage their files. It even supports adding subtitles to videos as well. While it offers unlimited storage, I should warn that its video compression process can be iffy for videos with resolutions lower than 1080p. It even takes a while for the video to finish processing when uploading.
These five sites are beneficial to sharing our videos without relying on YouTube. Personally, I think Internet Archive is best for hosting public videos since it's safer and is financially supported by many. While you're able to upload your videos to your preferred websites, that doesn't really mean you can also upload pirated stuff (with the exception of file.haus thankfully, so you're allowed to upload piracy files freely). Even as a huge piracy defender, I don't want those sites to be fucked over for that, especially when we're in such dire situations like YouTube's monopoly.
If you're still itching for a video platform. There are two sites that could interest you.
https://www.bitview.net/
BitView's basically an homage to old YouTube in terms of design. The userbase is decent, and it's okay overall. Though, it's required that videos "must be under 15 minutes long and less than 2GB in size."
https://vanillo.tv/
Vanillo's modern interface makes it look welcome to newcomers, and the userbase is nice. What's very helpful is that you can even monetize your videos. There's also the option of paying for "Vanillo Pro" to have the ability to upload in 4K and with lossless audio.
https://www.newgrounds.com/
Newgrounds isn't really a general video sharing platform, it's mainly for animation. However, it has a helpful forum community. Not only does it allow animation videos, but it also supports art, music, and games. You may already know what this site is, but what I really want to say is that if you want to get into making animation, Newgrounds is one of the best places to do so, given how YouTube poorly treats the independent animation scene.
If there are other video platforms or file-sharing services you'd like me to recommend, feel free to comment here for me to check out.
I've made an update to the YouTube alternatives post to include file.haus. Not only it's similar to buzzheavier, it allows uploading piracy.
The article's now on Neocities. Feel free to share. I'll probably polish it up later.
