PeerTube is fantastic with its decentralized model that prioritizes user privacy and control. However, it still struggles to gain widespread popularity.
What do you think could be done to enhance PeerTube’s appeal and functionality, possibly even becoming a serious alternative to YouTube?
Content. I’m there for the content, not the platform.
Who is on PeerTube that we should be watching?
How often are watch-worthy videos on PeerTube posted on Lemmy?
I’ve seen one or two interesting videos posted to Lemmy from PeerTube in the ~6 months I’ve been here. I think both were from someone called Linux Mom or something like that and I’m not sure but it looked like they weren’t posted by her but by someone else uploading her videos from YouTube to the service. One video was her showing how to use a device to backup old game cartridges and the other was a video for Linux beginners.
That’s about all I’ve seen that grabbed my attention, and the second was only because I liked the creator from the first. But again, I don’t know if it was an official upload that she supported, and if it wasn’t that’s not a good way to attract creators.
that might be me. Ive been pushing as much as possible on /c/video peertube stuff. Whenever I find it.
One of the best and worst things about peertube is that the suggested videos side of things that youtube has isnt a thing. You can search based on hashtags but getting the same fix like youtube is very hard. Its also good in that most creators that are on their are really interesting/dedicated to their craft. And copyright isnt really a thing on peertube, so music/videos/etc…are a LOT better. At least for a time.
This is probably the video? https://lemmy.world/post/15969866?scrollToComments=true
!veronicaexplains@tinkerbetter.tube now has her own peertube instance: https://tinkerbetter.tube/videos/local
Copyright absolutely is still a thing, the network is just under the radar at the moment and the people who could be suing over it don’t have visibility on usage of their stuff. But, make no mistake, if it ever gets big enough to get noticed, those people and corporations will absolutely sue.
There’s great biking and transit content from Canada at Peertube instance video.canadiancivil.com
There’s a webpage for that https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/ Top 5 are:
- Share channel administration between several users (103 votes)
- “Audio only” video quality (91 votes)
- Mobile phone client (91 votes)
- Allow third parties to contribute bandwidth (89 votes)
- Support multilingual videos (67 votes)
Feel free to vote or add more ideas.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but since a lot of creators rely on youtube’s monetization, it might be necessary for peertube to impement some form of monetization too.
I mean a large problem with services like Lemmy Mastodon and peer tube is that they’re complicated. There’s a learning curve require that I don’t have to have if I go to a place like YouTube or any other video site. Peertube requires me to learn about servers and other things in order to fully utilize their service and that’s a massive barrier to the public. Currently it’s preventing me because I just frankly don’t have time to go learn about more technological Concepts to best use a service.
Don’t get me wrong it’s not a dig at the services. They are excellent and I’m glad they’re here and one day I will figure out peertube but until these sites are as easy to use as going to a link and just doing whatever the person wants to do if they’re just not going to take off. Places like limmy and Mastodon and even peertube need a centralized portal so that is just super easy to start.
I’ve yet to get peertube working and I … just don’t care to take the time to figure it out. If it doesn’t work on mobile easily it won’t take off. And this is coming from a nerd.
This is absolutely a thing. I barely got onto Lemmy in the first place because having to choose a server is such a barrier to entry. Having to pick a community when you don’t even know what the service is like yet is a major turn off for some people, myself included.
Right I forgot about that. That’s also a thing with Mastodon. I think in decentralized Services need to push that there are each other so it doesn’t matter which one that you end up going with. That’s at least what drove me to get on let me in the first place cuz I know that whatever instance I would get on would allow me to participate with everybody else the same way you and me are on different instances right now.
Yeah that made it feel better once I knew that too. It just needs to be made optional I think, in the sense that there should be a “give me a random server with good ping and stats” kind of thing maybe.
Content, monetization, and ubiquity.
-
Content: PT skews heavily into Linux and Linux adjacent topics. And that’s fine, but when I say I watch more YT than regular TV, I’m not kidding. And its because of the diversity and variety of channels. Things like History Hit or Every Frame a Painting, and silly shit like Red Letter Media. YouTube isn’t just “let’s plays” and game streaming. So Peertube can’t be “Just Linux”
-
Monetization: Creators have to get paid. That’s just reality. It would be a fine world if everyone could spend hours doing their passion for free and not have to worry about deeding themselves. If you want #1, you need a certain amount if full time creators, and for that they need to get paid.
-
Ubiquity: Watching more YouTube than regular TV, I don’t want to sit in front of my computer to do it. We need to be able to access it from smart TVs, ROKU sticks, etc… And not just a port of the website that requires a mouse and keyboard, but something optimized to work with smart TV remote controls.
The issue with the Fediverse (not that I don’t love the fediverse, I do) is that all of those three things require large scale framework and organisational planning; which is the antithesis to what the Fediverse is all about.
Tl;Dr – Large scale success of PeerTube as a thing is largely impossible without abandoning the concept of federation itself.
Why does PT have to be a place that creators get paid? Yes, that is essential if we want peertube to TAKE OVER THE WORLD. But what is wrong with providing a platform that ISN’T driven by content revenue along side YouTube? Those creators have needs that aren’t being catered to elsewhere.
Ok, show us all the free PT content you’ve made without getting paid. What’s that, you can’t pay your rent with PeerTube views, you need a real job you say? Well that’s why there’s no content, creators need to eat too.
I mean it’s not hard to find my PT server with my content on it. And yeah, NO ONE IS EVERY GOING TO PAY TO SEE MY CONTENT. That’s kind of my point. There’s millions of people producing content THAT IS NOT COMMERCIALLY VIABLE, and they do this even though it doesn’t pay the rent. Like, I honestly don’t even know what your point is except to deny reality.
Nothing is wrong with that at all. But you’re never going to get enough content to increase your total subscriber base as long as your creators have to spend most of their time working other jobs.
What if I’m not manufacturing content, what if I just have things I want to say? Why can’t we have one fucking platform that isn’t monetized?
