Frequently Asked Questions

Yes! But the catch is that you have to pay for your Personal Data Server ('pod'), for storage of your videos and for the bandwidth used to stream your videos. We believe that is a much better deal for you than sharing 30%-50% of your revenue with YouTube.

A Personal Data Server ('pod') stores all your content, whether it is photos, videos, documents, or other files. It also stores your social media posts, comments, follows, and likes. Websites can use your pod to store your data. This means that you have full control over your data. You can change, delete, and, share it, or keep it private.

The Byoda pod is a Personal Data Server running software specifically developed to support social media services. It includes a data firewall that controls access to your content and data, and understands relations such as 'follow' or 'friend' that you have with other people that also run a Byoda pod. Byoda stands for 'Bring Your Own Data & Algorithms' and the software is open source.

BYO.Tube is a user-generated video site that is built on top of a network of Byoda pods. Information about the videos and the video files themselves are stored on the Byoda pods. The BYO.Tube website is a user interface to search for videos and play them. Additionally, BYO.Tube has an API that provides data for people who do not yet have their own Byoda pod.

While BYO.Tube uses a distributed architecture, it does not use crypto technologies such as blockchain or consensus algorithms. Each pod stores the data and the videos of the owner of the pod. You could say that the BYODA pods share a data schema but each pod stores its own data according to that schema. They make their data available, according to the access controls specified in the data schema, to other pods through a REST API.

While the data about the videos is stored in the Byoda pods, the videos with these icons are streamed from the YouTube infrastructure. The reason for this is that BYO.Tube does not yet support monetization. Until this feature is implemented, creators can continue to use the YouTube monetization for their videos. The videos without these icons are streamed from the Byoda pods, via a CDN, to the users. You can use the data filter on the home page to select YouTube-hosted videos or Byoda-hosted videos.

For experiences other than watching videos, you'll need to have your own pod. You can deploy one yourself if you have the technical skills, but most people are better off getting a hosted pod. You can sign up for one at BYO.Host. During the configuration of your pod, you can specify the name of your YouTube channel, if you have one. The pod will then automatically start importing the videos available from your YouTube channel page. Every time you upload a new video to YouTube, the pod will automatically import it.

Yes, you can, but you won't be able to upload videos, get recommendations, like/dislike videos, follow or subscribe to creators or place comments. You can only watch videos.

Not yet. We will implement this feature after we implement monetization.

You can reach out to us on Discord or email us at support@byo.tube.

YouTube is not free for creators. YouTube takes 50% of the revenue generated by ads and 30% of the revenue of your paying members and 'SuperThanks'. That is, if they have 'monetized' you, else they take 100%. BYO.Tube does not require revenue sharing and has no requirements for number of subscribers or views to get monetized.

If you host the pod yourself, nothing. This might be an option for creators with an Internet connection over fiber. Alternatively, you can get a hosted pod at BYO.Host. Over time, new hosting providers may become available and they would compete with each other on price and service. Over the last 10 years, video encoding has become so much more efficient and network bandwith has become so much cheaper, that we expect their cost to be a fraction of what YouTube takes in revenue share.