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March 22nd, 2026
On January 17th, I announced phpc.tv, a site for PHP programmers and friends to share and discuss videos related to the PHP programming language, frameworks, packages, tools, and more. It was very well received by the community, and videos started pouring in. In just one month, we reached 2,200 videos totaling 1,447 hours (1.2 TB) of content.
But the story began a few months before that. I was applying for jobs in November 2025 and was tailoring my resume for each position, so I kept re-reading my experience. This got me reminiscing about my past involvement in the PHP Quebec community, where I organized many events and initiatives, such as BBQs, monthly meetups, annual conferences, fundraisers, etc. Even though a burnout many years ago left me unable to contribute as much, the desire to do things for the PHP community never left me.
At the same time, I kept being frustrated by what the Web became. I was there 30 years ago, helping build and promote it. Websites that catered to small communities were the norm. Webrings and blog aggregators were how we discovered good content. Now, I feel like the Web lays in ruins after being destroyed by corporate greed.
YouTube has been especially frustrating. Bugs go unfixed for years. New bugs keep appearing. Algorithmic manipulation keeps us hooked on content of someone else's choosing, while preventing discovery. "Show fewer" isn't only annoying, but also a lie. Ads, double-ads, middle-of-the-video ads: the noise-to-signal ratio keeps growing. As a creator, you only get a tiny time window where you might get noticed, and then you're old news. PHP-related videos get completely drowned in 5 billion videos: the heavy price we pay for centralization. Auto-generated captions are embarrassingly bad, and even worse for non-English content. More recently, I started seeing videos auto-dubbed without the author's permission and pushed into search results with no indication that they're auto-dubbed, and no configuration to exclude them from the search. I almost completely stopped using YouTube. Going there makes me angry and tired. I wanted to go back to a Web before the pillaging.
phpc.social already solved the problem with social media by creating a smaller site powered by Mastodon, an open source software. It's also federated with other such sites, so you still have access to the broader community, but with much control over interactions for both the admins and the users. There are no algorithms or ads, our data doesn't get sold to 500+ "partners", and the moderators are people I know and trust to do the right thing. There is no central authority in the federated web. Each site makes its own decisions for its community. That's the only social site I use on a regular basis. The conversations there are of significantly higher quality compared to what the big corporations convinced us to enjoy. There's no comparison. I feel good after checking up on my friends and acquaintances. I no longer feel like a commodity being abused and sold.
So I connected the dots: desire to do something for the PHP community, resurrect the pre-enshittified Web, have a better video-sharing site, and use open source to do so. The answer was staring me in the face: PeerTube! I set out to do an experiment. It was so easy to get it running that I almost immediately copied the phpc.social color scheme, registered a domain, and reached out to a few creators. I convinced some to synchronize their channels before the big announcement. It also allowed me to stress-test and tweak the infrastructure. I didn't expect to have so much content so quickly.
To me, such a site is more than just a better experience. I want to ensure that when the quest for infinite growth inevitably destroys the big sites, we as a community already have a cozy place to receive us. We can also ditch the big sites before they fall. Why suffer? I want a place that doesn't censor creators or punish them for not being sufficiently advertiser-friendly. I want creators to be able to crowdfund their work any way they like. I want a place that exists in the interest of the viewers and creators, not shareholders or advertisers. I want different sites for different interests and communities, each with its own values. This is exactly how the Web used to be when I started programming.
I also remembered the lessons I learned in all my years of running and participating in open source communities: don't do it alone and don't make all the decisions. So I reached out to a few moderators of phpc.social. They gave me valuable advice on moderation rules and procedures, compliance, and infrastructure. From the early days, phpc.tv had several moderators and several people with access to various accounts and servers. More recently, we joined forces with phpc.social on OpenCollective, which is where you can financially support both sites. This is how the PHP community works! Now go, enjoy the videos, and if you're a creator with videos elsewhere, synchronize them in a few clicks.
In the next article, I plan to discuss some of the challenges behind running such a service.