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Is PeerTube dead or is discoverability bad?

I saw a few videos shared on PeerTube recently, and created an account on an instance. However, unlike Mastodon and Lemmy I'm struggling to discover channels to subscribe to. When I use the search functions on my instance, most results are either interesting channels which haven't been updated in years, or random foreign language TV shows and episodes.

Just for example, if I'm trying to find videos on "Gaming" on one of the largest instances, the most recent video is over 1 year ago: https://tilvids.com/search?categoryOneOf=7

Is discoverability on PeerTube bad, or are there barely any active channels?

Edit: BTW one very active creator on PeerTube is https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos and his videos are excellent. But can there really only be a handful of active creators to follow on the whole platform?

130 comments

  • I have a Peertube server, and I've requested to follow tilvids, and they denied my request, and they also do not follow my Peertube server. I think one issue with tilvids may be that they essentially choose not to federate, and therefore you won't find much because of this.

    I just searched for "Gaming" on my Peertube server and I seem to get a non-ending list of servers. Unfortunately, one column wide, but a lot. When I search for King's Quest, I am also getting a seemingly unending stream of videos.

    I follow every Peertube server I can that is clearly not fascist, primarily NSFW, NSFL, etc.

    Maybe you just need to find a server that is more federated with other Peertube servers.

    • This is the issue with federated youtube. It should ALL be federated, and all searchable, mandatory.

      Now if I the user decide I don't want to see an instance/video/creator, I should have two options.

      Block - Used for when content offends you. It has zero place being in your feed.

      Not Interested - Used when content isn't offensive per se, but you really don't care about it either. It's not completely blocked from your feed, but it's certainly not getting first dibs to show up from now on.

      This leaves one thing that some may feel is an issue. Lets say there were a small dicked loser who did nazi salutes in public, and wanted to upload hateful content. Lets give him a random name for the sake of simplicity. Let's call him.....Elon. Hypothetical name.

      So lets say small dicked Elon, starts uploading hateful content. On youtube you would report him. On peertube, since he owns the hosted server, you'd be reporting him to himself. Which is as you can imagine, useless.

      So from here, you block them, and then you never have to see their hateful content ever again.

      Because their rise, only comes from people giving these people attention.

      • Yes!

      • I see two possible ways for it to succeed:

        • Federate by default, defederate if you have to. This is how Lemmy mostly seems to work; I proposed a policy for defederation for sh.itjust.works that has been used, we will federate with you unless you start spamming or hosting illegal porn or spewing hate speech or that kind of shit, then we'll defederate. That has to happen at the instance level; if example.lol is generally fine but there's one account there that's a nuisance that's what the block button is for, but lolita.rape gets defederated (and reported to the FBI).
        • Apply and join model. Have a coalition of instances that agree to mutually uphold certain moderation practices (no hate speech, no kid fucking, goat or human, no human trafficking, etc) and then they federate with each other, eventually forming a large and wholesome community.

        Nobody federates and it's a bunch of independent nothings won't work. Youtubers will use it as a backup service, a couple of the real paranoid Linux types will host their videos there that someone might even watch, and half the instances will be places you go when you've been kicked off of Youtube.

    • Tilvids.com don't want to allow following or follow anyone themselves. That's a policy they have had for a long time. However... Since Tilvids is on this list: https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?search=tilvids, they are part of the Global Search Index. So you can get videos from tilvids in your search results, if you instance has enabled Global Search.

      Also, you, as an instance owner, can follow channels on tilvids, by using their channel handles.

    • Fell free to send federation request :) https://peer.madiator.cloud/

  • In that case issue is some instances do not allow global search and that's why search will limit to only channels you follow and your instance.

  • that's the chicken and egg problem of any social network: people don't want to go to a social network with only a few number of content creators and content creators don't want to spend their time managing another platform for only a few number of viewer... social networks needs people to be alive and so if you are interested in Peertube, it will be hard at first but use it so, just like voting system where every vote count, the platform will have one more user and if other people do the same, the platform will grow and if it grow enough it will start to attract bigger content creator, etc...

    It's in people hand to break the cycle and makes that Youtube alternative a viable alternative.

    I'm a peertube instance admin for years now and closed my google/youtube account 10 years ago, so I'm doing my part to break it.

  • Try the app, it's a little better

    • Not if you want to subscribe to a channel, or interact with videos in any way.

      • Yeah it is a major work in progress but discoverability is better and you can use Sepia search from within it.

  • i can’t easily upload from my ipad which is my main video creation device.

    i just post to my personal goto social instance without issue.

130 comments