Is there a self-hosted "youtube" that my kid can upload videos to?
So my daughter LOVES making videos, but is too young to have her own channel for youtube (nor would I really want her to put any of her videos up there).
I was wondering what may be out there when it comes to a private, self-hosted youtube-esque server. I looked into peertube, but I'm not a fan of it being federated and being searchable from other sites. (That and trying to get it to work from behind a separate reverse proxy has been maddening).
It doesn't have to be too terribly fancy. I'm just looking for something my daughter can upload videos to from her phone and pretend to have her own channel. Bonus points if Mom and Dad can comment on them and like the videos!
Posted May 11, 2023, 2:53 AM UTC
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https://github.com/mediacms-io/mediacms
This looks like it may be what you're looking for. Seems like you can run it through docker too so it should be easy to set up.
If you want to look for other alternatives a good search term might be "self-hosted video cms".
Oooooo...this looks very promising! Spinning up an instance now! I'll let you know if this works!
UPDATE: Installed via non-docker method and it was quick and painless! EXACTLY what I was looking for! Thank you so much u/returnexitsuccess !
Might be fun to expose it to your family so she can have an audience, I'm sure the grandparents and such would like to see what she's making. It looks like you can do invite only accounts and the videos can be uploaded with various privacy levels, I assume there's one for "people with accounts only".
That's pretty much what I'm setting up. Turning off registration because I don't want randos on here. I figure she can request to have her friends on here once their parents give permission and have it be her own little space where she can upload all her awkward videos for me to playback come prom night.
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Perfect username checks out moment
Curious, how is it going now? (From a parenting/kid's happiness perspective).
It’s absolutely everything I wanted, tbh. My daughter (8 years old) LOVES it because it looks and feels just like YouTube. She’s been adding videos herself, and is even learning how to edit movies via iMovie.
As a parent, I love it because I can basically turn the entire site to account only viewing and turn off registrations which keeps the internet riff rad out, but leaves the ability to add her friends if she wants to. It really is the ideal scenario!
That is awesome and I love to hear that. Glad it's going great. You sound like a great parent.
My daughter's too young for that now but I'll definitely remember this for when she grows up a little more.
Mediacms has actually been solid for me. Not super featured but it looks like youtube and works just fine. I turned off encoding and have just slapped in hundreds of little meme videos and game clips and whatever to share with friends.
Yeah, this is absolutely perfect for what I needed it to be as well. Changed the logo and the colors to match YouTube and my daughter is over the moon and is set to fill up my NAS with cringe-tastic videos.
How is sharing content with friends? Can anyone see your videos or do they have to register?
Public/private/unlisted yeah. No registration needed to watch public videos (or unlisted if you have the link)
Had no clue I wanted / needes this till I saw this! Thanks!
Peertube was such a pain to attempt to install but this looks pretty easy.
It's lightyears easier to install than PeerTube for sure.
Nice username
I stumbled on this thread by accident, but this looks promising. How is it in terms of handling large bitrate videos, does it have automatic transcoding if network speed can't handle it? If so, this would be nice to use to share videos with family.
Also curious about the transcoding. Guess I’ll just have to spin up a docker image and play! Not like it takes much effort if it has a compose yml. :)
Looks impressive, thanks for the link!
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I don’t know if there’s much to address. Generations grew up with home videos with no subscribers or stats. Videos are fun on their own.
Depending on age. 5 year old? Yeah, probably not gonna care. 14? You can bet she‘ll hate not being able to boost her self worth with (obviously worthless) subscribers and likes.
Just as electricity, access to essential nutrients, education… times do change, so do standards. Not saying a young child should be let loose on the internet, but shutting them out completely might get you some grudges. It’s a difficult topic and should be addressed individually.
Edit: to clarify: i‘m not advocating for kids to make YouTube content. I‘m not saying a YouTube „career“ is a healthy hobby for a child. I‘m not saying anything beyond „a kid that wants to make YouTube videos likely wants that because they want others to see. Without others seeing the content it might be useless to them. Cutting them off YouTube/social media in favor of „private social media“ alternatives might garner animosity. Talk to your child. Don’t argue with back in my day platitudes.“
It's a double edged sword, while having a few subscribers and likes might boost self worth it's also possible the lack of likes and subscribers will lower that self worth.
If the age is low enough to not understand that the site is not YouTube then subscribers and views doesn’t matter.
Not really, she’s 8 and cares more about just making videos to make them….not so much about an audience.
When shes old enough to care and to have a YouTube channel, then she can. For now this is essentially YouTube with training wheels. On a private track. In the middle of nowhere.
Ah great then, this would be an encouraging thing for your kid!
Haha, I liked how you put it -
Those are exactly the features children and teenagers shouldn't be focusing on for any social media site. They are the main reason social media is bad for mental health and depression.
Keep the focus on having fun making silly videos for the family.