<p>📺 PeerTube Co-op FAQ: Building a Member-Owned Alternative to YouTube</p><p>The future of video doesn’t belong to platforms. It belongs to people.</p><p>We’re building a PeerTube co-op: a member-owned, democratically governed video platform based in BC. No algorithms deciding what matters. No corporate choke points. No waiting for permission.</p><p>This is about taking control of the infrastructure, the governance, and the culture—and doing it together.</p><p>Why a co-op?</p><p>Because co-ops give people ownership, governance rights, and collective resilience. Instead of handing data and control to a platform, members pool resources, share decision-making, and shape policies together.</p><p>BC has a strong legal framework for co-operatives, which makes it a natural place to explore this seriously.</p><p>Why PeerTube?</p><p>PeerTube is federated, open-source, and already battle-tested as a decentralized alternative to YouTube. It’s not perfect—but it provides a solid foundation for a co-op structure to build on top of.</p><p>The idea is to pair federated tech with co-operative governance, so neither corporate control nor a single admin dictates the rules.</p><p>Who’s behind this?</p><p>Right now, this is being organized by me (<a href="https://atomicpoet.org/users/atomicpoet" rel="nofollow">@atomicpoet</a>) and <a href="https://tech.lgbt/@Crissy" rel="nofollow">@Crissy</a>, along with a growing group of interested folks: creators, privacy advocates, security experts, and co-op thinkers from around the world.</p><p>We’re still early—think founding conversations, not bylaws and board elections. But the energy is real.</p><p>How much does it cost to join?</p><p>What follows is the proposed model, not something set in stone. The final structure will be decided by the member-owners once the co-op is formed.</p><p>The idea is to keep membership affordable for individuals while ensuring the co-op is financially sustainable from the start—with no ads, no data harvesting, and no outside investors. Just members pooling resources to run the platform together.</p><p>Base membership: C$5.95/month<br>Medium tier (10–100 GB/month): +C$3 → C$8.95/month<br>Heavy tier (100 GB+): +C$10 → C$15.95/month</p><p>At scale, with a typical user mix (80% base / 15% medium / 5% heavy), this works out to about C$6.90 per member per month, which comfortably covers hosting and operational costs.</p><p>There’s also a one-time buy-in of C$50, which funds initial setup (domain, CDN deposits, buffer) and helps keep the early months profitable without raising dues. When spread over the first year, that’s roughly C$4.17/month in effective cost coverage.</p><p>What happens if the co-op grows faster than expected?</p><p>The financial and technical model is step-wise, not linear. As membership increases, transcoding nodes, storage/CDN tiers, and egress commitments scale at defined traffic thresholds.</p><p>The co-op’s development will unfold in three phases, with member-owners deciding collectively when to move from one to the next.</p><p>Do I need technical skills to participate?</p><p>No. Technical expertise is welcome but not required. Governance, policy, communications, creative, and community-building skills are just as valuable. Infrastructure will be professionally managed, with costs shared through dues.</p><p>Will the co-op run its own infrastructure or rely on third parties?</p><p>The proposal uses managed hosting as a baseline, scaling as membership grows. This provides reliability early on while retaining the ability to self-host more components later.</p><p>How will moderation work?</p><p>Moderation scales with user base and federation breadth:</p><p>Member reporting and rotating stewards handle first-line triage<br>Paid moderation begins once activity reaches 10–15+ hours/week<br>Budget estimates: up to C$270/month for ~100 users; part-time moderation (~C$1,755/month) for ~500 users</p><p>Will the instance federate with everyone or be selective?</p><p>The proposal starts with a curated allowlist of trusted instances to control load.</p><p>It will also:</p><p>Adopt shared blocklists as a baseline<br>Document defederation criteria and appeals to keep the process transparent</p><p>As membership grows, federation posture can be revisited by member-owners.</p><p>What’s the timeline for incorporation and launch?</p><p>We’re not working toward rigid dates—we’re building deliberately, in three clear phases:</p><p>Phase 1: Formation and groundwork. Incorporation, drafting bylaws, establishing MVP infrastructure, and setting out the core policies (ToS, AUP, takedown).<br>Phase 2: Growth and refinement. Expanding membership, activating the hybrid pricing model, introducing stipends, and refining federation posture.<br>Phase 3: Maturity and expansion. Adding part-time moderation, building reserves and insurance, and exploring potential expansion into other Fediverse services.</p><p>Each phase builds on the last, and decisions about when to transition between them will be made collectively by member-owners.</p><p>What drives costs the most?</p><p>Egress and bandwidth dominate, not storage. P2P offload reduces egress as viewer concurrency rises, but outbound data remains the biggest expense.</p><p>How does the pricing hold up financially?</p><p>At as few as five members, the co-op becomes cash-flow positive, and margins scale significantly with growth.</p><p>100 members → estimated monthly surplus C$587<br>1,000 members → estimated monthly surplus C$6,870</p><p>I’ve never been in a co-op before. Will there be guidance?</p><p>Yes. The initial bylaws and governance structure will include clear documentation. New members will be onboarded through AGMs, published policies, and transparent reporting, as required under BC Co-operative Association law.</p><p>Will you use open-source tools for internal communications?</p><p>That will ultimately be up to the member-owners to decide collectively.</p><p>For now, tools like Google Docs are being used temporarily to get everyone aligned quickly. Yes, the irony isn’t lost—it’s like holding a union meeting in Jeff Bezos’ living room. But this is just to get the ball rolling, not a long-term choice.</p><p>How will governance work?</p><p>We’re still defining this collectively, but the plan is to follow BC co-op regulations while ensuring member governance is meaningful, not symbolic. Expect conversations around:</p><p>Founding member structure<br>Board or steering committee setup<br>Decision-making processes<br>Transparency and accountability measures</p><p>I’m not a PeerTube user, but I’m interested in the co-op structure. Is that relevant?</p><p>Yes—very. Some participants are here primarily because they’re passionate about co-operatives, not necessarily PeerTube. That expertise will be crucial for getting the legal, organizational, and governance frameworks right.</p><p>Will non-members be able to watch videos?</p><p>Yes. As with most PeerTube instances, most viewing will be public, but uploading and policy decisions are reserved for member-owners. The co-op’s primary responsibility is to its members, while still providing an open and accessible platform for viewers.</p><p>What will the co-op be called?</p><p>The official name and branding will be chosen collectively by the founding member-owners after incorporation.</p><p>How do I get involved or stay informed?</p><p>The next step will be setting up an initial coordination space (on open-source infrastructure, if members choose that path) to keep everyone looped in and start shaping this together.</p><p>If you want to be kept informed, reach out privately or share your email so you can be included when that happens.</p><p>Isn’t this ambitious?</p><p>Yes. But the response so far has been incredible. The mix of skills and motivations showing up this early—technical, organizational, privacy, cultural—is exactly what’s needed to make something real.</p><p>📝 Closing Thought</p><p>This is still early days. But something’s forming—a group of people who see the cracks in the platform world and want to build something better, together.</p><p>If that resonates with you, you’re welcome here.</p><p><a href="/tags/peertubecoop/" rel="tag">#PeerTubeCoop</a> <a href="/tags/peertube/" rel="tag">#PeerTube</a> <a href="/tags/cooperative/" rel="tag">#Cooperative</a><br><br>RE: <a href="https://atomicpoet.org/objects/2289eb47-0f39-463d-a056-8568e12e70f3" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="atomicpoet.org/objects/2289eb47-0f39-463d-a056-8568e12e70f3"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">atomicpoet.org/objects/2289eb4</span><span class="invisible">7-0f39-463d-a056-8568e12e70f3</span></a></p>
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