Owncast Newsletter November 2025
In This Issue
- A Note From The Editor
- Technical Updates
- Features
- Closing Remarks
A Note From The Editor
Did you miss me? This July-November gap is the longest in the history of the newsletter, but it's been for a good reason. I've been on a bit of a wander, enjoying a sabbatical from my usual daily life, and promised myself I'd also not spend that free time constantly thinking about my projects. For what was likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, that was definitely the right choice. It was worth it to just be for a while, see new things, meet new people, and fill my head with new music.
I got back into things in October, and because I insisted on staying off my projects, I spent much of October just finding the featured streamer. Add in writing and approval time and...here we are. But, now that I'm home for a good while with no travel plans, it'll be time to spend the dark of the year focusing on my projects.
One thing I encountered in my time away is how no matter where I went, everyone I met is fed up with large tech platform dominance. Every time I'd snap an instant film photo to give someone, they'd look at it longingly and talk about how they've realized how cloud-stored digital photos devalued the memories they had of them, and of how real a physical photo feels. They'd talk about what they do to cope with algorithmic exploitation, or how they've left big tech social media. I realize I tend to interact mostly with outside-the-mainstream types of people, but if even those people are starting to wake up to the Enshittification Of Everything, then I'm happy to see it.
Anyway, that's enough rambling. Let's plow through some updates and news and get on to a really fun featured streamer...
Owncasts For Roku Updated
In the May edition of the newsletter, I announced finalizing code for the Owncasts client for Roku. The update was finally released in August, after some extra heroics from 1hitsong. One of the challenges of working in the Roku ecosystem is that Roku's app certification rules are a moving target. Another more unique challenge with Owncasts is that, as a client that simply renders an ever-changing "library" of streams is that it doesn't always neatly fit into the expectations expressed in Roku's certification rules.
To put it plainly, Roku expects an app to reflect the directly curated library of an organization that is somehow monetizing its content. Owncasts doesn't really fit either of those criteria, so when I go to publish it, I often find the new laundry list of new certification rules that have to be...compromised with. If it weren't for a seasoned developer like 1hitsong, we'd still be stuck in the mud.
So, even though it was released in August, I wanted to give the shout-out again.
Kit On Fireside Fedi
Following on from the July edition of the newsletter, Fireside Fedi invited me to come have a nice hour's chat. We covered a bunch of topics (Ozoned is quite the conversationalist), many of them centering around Owncast, the newsletter, the Fediverse in general, and the increasingly worrying state of tech oligarchy. We also talked about roller derby, one of my other passions. It was a really lovely time, and if you haven't seen it already, the archive of it is up on The Fedi.Video Peertube.
Featured Streamer: Kiri
I always knew that keeping my nose to the wind of the Owncast user space would lead me to see interesting projects. I didn't expect, though, to find myself curled up in bed soaking up cozy vibes watching as an anime lamia (a mythical woman-snake creature) with purple hair casually adds shading and color to a piece of art. I've somehow been a streaming gadfly for years and never sat down to a vtuber stream, but I'm now wondering what took me so long, because Kiri is, in a word, charming.
I confess that, while I do know what a vtuber is, I'd never sat down to watch a vtuber stream before. For the uninitiated, a vtuber is a streamer who replaces their likeness in the stream with one of a fictional character. Anime avatars are likely the most popular, but really, anything's possible. Modern computer vision makes motion capture achievable, so the avatar can perform convincingly well.
Kiri's comfort with the streaming studio setup, interacting with the chat, and settling into a rhythm of relaxed art work...with the occasional break to muse on a bug in some C++ code or reminisce over the smell of a CRT...starts to impart an air of coziness. I found myself regarding the stream almost as some sort of friendly co-working teleconference. Sure, my co-worker has horns and a snake body, but maybe the teleconference just went to a different universe.
Kiri actually wrote the software to create and control her vtuber avatar herself. Called SnekStudio, it's part of her FOSS stack for compositing the avatar with the screen cast and streaming. She started on Twitch, but eventually set up a multi-streaming system so she could incorporate Owncast. "[My community and I have] always had a kind of pro-open-source pro-decentralization attitude on the channel, so staying on Twitch exclusively was kind of antithetical to everything I wanted to do," Kiri shared in our interview. "We didn't want to be on Youtube either, due to a laundry list of mostly-ethical reasons and their approach to moderation."
While she is personally attracted to the DIY ethos of FOSS projects, using Twitch represents the opportunity to reach a larger audience and to recoup some of her costs through the smoother monetization system. Meanwhile, the bridging of Twitch and Owncast audiences also help introduce the audience to the Owncast server, and the Owncast server poses a place the audience can move to should her Twitch channel ever run contrary to the caprices of Amazon or their algorithms. "The majority of the audience is still on Twitch", she said. "I just know that, one of these days, Twitch is going to do something really bad. Something that makes the platform unusable to people like me, but the stream will be able to live on without it, without having to resort to Youtube or something, thanks to having a self-hosted solution like Owncast. I'm doing what I can to build an audience over there, but discoverability is tough."
Kiri streams nearly every day of the week, with art and coding streams on weekdays and gaming streams (with a focus on indie and retro) games on Sunday. One must presume Saturdays are for sneks to sleep in. If the timing isn't right for live streams, she also keeps a VOD archive on her Peertube instance; despite the hosting and bandwidth costs, it's again something she chooses rather than a Youtube channel "for ethical reasons".
If you enjoy watching live drawing, feel more productive with a virtual co-worker on your second screen, or just like the coziness that comes with being around someone who's cheerfully working on their art and talking about what pops into their head, Kiri's the vibes for you. I'm really glad to have stumbled across her and learned a little about vtubing in the process.
Closing Remarks
Starting in this edition of the newsletter, I decided to drop the "editorial we" pretenses; this newsletter is something done with love by a single person, but it tries to reflect back a community I find important. I don't have help locating events, building a calendar, or even getting quotes for the articles. I rely extensively on people in the community sharing their announcements and stories with me. Please, if you want to see something in the newsletter, get in touch with me. I might just decide to release an edition because of what you bring to me.
Additionally, if you'd like to help build the social fabric of the Owncast community, please consider checking out the #owncast-community channel on rocket.chat or the Owncast community on Lemmy.
Until then, be good to each other and keep the streams running!