You can link to videos, but they need to be hosted on other services, such as PeerTube. Lemmy instances are relatively lightweight and don’t necessarily have the storage space for very large files such as videos.
Could this be improved by Lemmy apps and the web interface by integrating a player?
Why were videos more prominent on Reddit; was it easier to upload videos to it?
I suspect the video experience can improve in the future.
Yes, true. But it does not need to be hosted on the instance. It can also be hosted somewhere else and embedded here. Problem with that approach is that itf the external video or gif goes offline, you lose the video.
The embedded thing, I think I remember that there was something like that in the code of the jerboa app or the Lemmy backend.
Video hosting is very resource-intensive, and likely still beyond the capabilities of most Instance owners. While this feature will likely appear eventually for larger Instances, we have a natural disadvantage that will slow our adoption somewhat.
We aren’t a single, centralized company that can throw a huge wad of cash at the problem.
That’s a feature not a bug.
Reddit’s native video hosting and player are absolutely not something I miss nor desire, felt like they were designed with the goal of frustrating the user at least 10 times per day.
Apollo had it’s own parser for most content. If third party Lemmy apps also start bundling built in players for YouTube and other popular hosting services, you won’t need Lemmy handling that.
I think video hosting would severely impact the storage needs for instance admins.
I hadn’t realized that video hosting on Reddit servers was a big thing. I have linked to videos I made on YouTube and I guess Reddit Enhancement Suite and Apollo made that look good.
So I suppose we need to wait and see how the clients evolve and if people start linking to more video content where appropriate, like in a community such as c/videos or c/unexpected.
