What would it take to build a media empire of your own? Where you have complete control of the origin and destinations of your content? This session explores how creators can use federated tools to host, distribute, and connect media content outside the limits of corporate platforms.
We’ll begin with PeerTube, a decentralized platform that can serve as the foundation of a personal media network. Participants will learn what’s involved in setting up PeerTube, who can provide hosting, and what to consider when managing scalability and distribution. From there, we’ll expand the conversation to how WordPress, using the ActivityPub plugin, can serve as a publishing and distribution hub, raising the question: should you build your own DIY federated media site, and what are the trade-offs?
The session also looks at the role of RSS in the Fediverse—bridging the gap between traditional syndication and newer ActivityPub-based distribution. We’ll discuss how video publishing might integrate with federated servers like Mastodon and speculate on where ActivityPub will be by late 2025 and beyond. Finally, we’ll consider some hosting solutions, like Reclaim Hosting or Fedihost, in combination with content delivery networks (CDN), that would allow you to take ultimate control of your media and distribution.
Attendees will leave with both practical workflows and a broader vision for building their own federated media empires—small yet scalable, and entirely their own.
Comments Archive
reclaimhosting: Welcome to the Chat
Mark: Wow, a two minute break!
Empire: @Mark to build anticipation...
HibbittsDesign: Greetings from Vancouver
Empire: I'm pre-recorded, or am I ai
taylorjadin: Or are you memorex?
Empire: I'm live at my keyboard!
Readywriting: MEDIA EMPIRE YES
Empire: I screwed up the hashtag, sorry.
Stephen Downes: But I want the link now!
Empire: https://dogoodwork.online/presentation/media-empire
Empire: @Steven ask and you shall receive
Jason: I could have used that video a while ago. It was one of those terms that everyone was using and I was like "what is the fediverse?" Is this a spiderman thing?
Stephen Downes: Oh I like that
taylorjadin: It still has it but Youtube has completely killed access to videos from anything that looks like it might be a datacenter IP address in the last year
Empire: Echo still entered the preso
taylorjadin: We use a kind of custom setup where we use Owncast at https://reclaim.tv and Peertube at https://archive.reclaim.tv
I have a post on what we did with owncast in particular: https://jadin.me/hacking-on-owncasts-ui-for-reclaimtv/
Stephen Downes: Don't edit yourself Jim
taylorjadin: Of course I typo'd one of my links: https://archive.reclaim.tv
Empire: Thanks, Taylor for including your links.
taylorjadin: Its a pretty easy install on Reclaim Cloud, but Peertube changes often enough that we can't really automate the upgrade procedures just yet
Empire: So imagine Jim Groom, as I often do, speaking from a mountain. Thats' why there's an echo
Stephen Downes: Exactly, storage is a bear
Stephen Downes: I am looking to join a PeerTube coop to manage costs
taylorjadin: We're currently using just under 370GB of storage on archive.reclaim.tv
taylorjadin: we've got a lot there, but yeah, storage is a big deal with video
jes: Hello from Eora Sydney!
Empire: @Stephen (finally spelled you name right) coop is a good plan
Stephen Downes: So on Fedihost that would be costing you $72/month
Empire: I'm better at creating video than typing
Carmen Vallis: Hello from Wangal land, Australia
Empire: Hello to the folks down under!
taylorjadin: @stephen For the storage yes, then you add the $7 or more for the server, depending on how fast you want encoding to be and other features
Stephen Downes: Also, it says in small print on Fedihost, "Prices are introductory, subject to change."
Empire: Ah, yes, the fine print
taylorjadin: Yeah and you need their most expensive plan to do the stuff we use with our peertube like livestreaming, the video studio, multiple encoders etc.
Empire: I listed the plugins in my "backstory" post here - https://andheblogs.andyrush.net/birth-of-an-empire/
Stephen Downes: I hates the block editpor
Empire: @Stephen I never hated it, but I appreciate its power now.
taylorjadin: I like what the block editor can do but its far from perfect. To be fair, I've never liked the classic editor either.
Stephen Downes: I appreciate its power too, it's just that (IMHO) it's so very badly designed
Empire: I would say the block editor gets better with each iteration
Christina Hendricks: Our university-hosted WP blogs site still uses classic editor, and that's what my blog is on. So I've never taken the time to really learn blocks.
Christina Hendricks: I keep thinking I need to move my blog over to my Reclaim Hosting site!
Carmen Vallis: Hello everybody, thanks for joining!
HibbittsDesign: Very cool stuff, thanks for sharing!
Stephen Downes: Great stuff, love Bunnyweb
Tim Klapdor: Amazing! Love the deep dive!
Carmen Vallis: We’re going to make this session interactive using a Miro board — please jump in and add your ideas live. The link: https://shorturl.at/EXiGm
Christina Hendricks: (Can't find here in the emoji interface!0
Carmen Vallis: Thanks Christina!
taylorjadin: Carmen your session link is over here (we keep the chats seperate):
https://reclaimopen.com/session/re-wilding-edtech-a-collaborative-speculative-scenario-design-workshop/
