Ask Lemmy

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?

Content, monetization, and ubiquity.

1. 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"

2. 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.

3. 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.

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.

The idea of PT being able to compete and differentiate itself from Google to content creators by paying them money is ridiculous. You're attempting to attack the main strength of the competition, and they are way, way, way, WAY better at it than you are. It's fucking doomed from the start. You have to play to your strengths, and manufacturing commercial content for revenue is just not what PeerTube's design is even intended for.

Ten years ago you could have made an exciting pitch involving a block chain that pays hosters and content creators but now we can see how stupid that is. Well it doesn't get less stupid without the blockchain.

There's a webpage for that https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/ Top 5 are:

1. Share channel administration between several users (103 votes)
2. "Audio only" video quality (91 votes)
3. Mobile phone client (91 votes)
4. Allow third parties to contribute bandwidth (89 votes)
5. Support multilingual videos (67 votes)

Feel free to vote or add more ideas.

i think all the issues can be surmounted if they find a way to pay creators like youtube does.

What I'm about to say is probably dumb but... I think it wouldn't be really possible for PeerTube to become a serious alternative to YouTube, because of decentralization.

Like, sure, that may be a good thing in certain cases - we're literally on Lemmy - but I want to be able to access content from most PeerTube instances using one singular instance, which isn't really possible with PeerTube. As a result, the majority of instances feel dead.

I think what we need is an open-source and centralized alternative to YouTube (if that doesn't already exist), but I might be missing something.

Along with the other things posted here, it would be nice if peertube had a landing page or even if there was a "watch peertube now" button that led to a page showcasing current popular videos or something.

I clicked your link to peertube.org, then had to "Ask Sepia, our iconic cuttlefish" for a search term to get a list of videos, which after scrolling for a bit moved into lists and channels. A click of the "show more videos" button opened a new tab, and upon clicking a video to watch yet another tab opened to what seems like a fediverse instance for peertube?

For it to be a viable alternative, it needs to capture the way people watch and engage with youtube. If I am watching a video on youtube, there are suggestions for similar content below. If I go to the home page and scroll, either the most popular content will show if I am not signed in, or if I am, content related to videos I watch will be shown.

If I click to watch a video, it will open in the same window.

This is the sort of usability that will entice those new users to make the leap.

Money for creators

Make it easy for creators to be paid, recruit services like nebula and means tv to use it as its backend, make the ui prettier than YouTube not just an orange copycat.

And make it possible for people to set it up as a tiktok competitor focused on short videos with stitches and video replies easy which makes discussion and and creators explaining complex topics easy and straight to the point (which is why i use TikTok theres so much useful knowledge people teach without long intros and fluff like YouTube)

I think the following has a good chance of working:

• YouTube does another fucky thing and messes with people's revenue. Again.
• Some big YouTuber decides to host their own peertube instance (funded by patreon) for their content. Either on its own or as a "backup".
• People go there, and other YouTubers follow seeing that it doesn't have YouTube fuckery. Either to the same instance or another.
• YouTube continues to make unpopular decisions, meaning more and more people go to Peertube and it becomes engrained in public knowledge.

Basically, "YouTube fucks up a bunch enough for people to try to move".

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.

There are currently two main reasons I don't use PeerTube:

1. Videos have inconsistent playback performance.
2. It's pretty confusing and difficult to use if you are just looking for an experience similar to YouTube.

If they can find a way to make playback performance consistent and make the entire experience better, then I'd consider using it. But, I already use YouTube alternatives like Odysee and Rumble, so I don't know how much I'd end up actually using PeerTube.

Personally? Onboarding.

I've looked at the instructions on how to install peertube several times now, but its just not worth the hassle at this point. Until I can run it in just a single docker image, without an external database or email service required, then I'm not going to bother.

Its really frustrating, because I really like the project, but I just don't have the ability to use services like it without docker or podman.

It really all just comes down to the content and the service that can be provided to the content creators.

Storage space is expensive and is the biggest hurdle. Most PeerTube instances have very small storage quotas, so a content creator would run out of storage fast.

people see "alternative" and think "competition," when they should consider it as "coexistance." so either some youtubers would have to also upload to peertube as an additional option in case of site maintenance and other such trouble, or people on peertube could upload to youtube a week or so later and as part of their end credits/description/whatever, say that viewers can see this content one week early on peertube. It wouldn't be THE fix for peertube, but more like the first step in a series of ever-increasing tweaks that could lead to this theoretical fix.

Of course, this is based on old practices such as "In theaters Friday, but you can see Thursday at Midnight" and other such strange ad campaigns, so the idea may not be entirely transferable. But that shouldn't mean someone shouldn't at least try that and see what happens.

Personally I have a very small yt channel that I haven't uploaded to for months. I'm making stuff again, and my plan is to start uploading things to peertube early and then to yt, and I will tell people in my videos that they can find my videos early there.

I doubt I'll make a huge difference from me personally, but I'm sure if more creators did this it would start to. There needs to be a bridge between the platforms.

The thing is, they'd have to do it for the sake of creating an alternative space, and not for like patreon benefits or something. I guess the peertube videos could be unlisted and there be links from patreon, and then they go public after the yt one does? I don't even know if peertube has this functionality.

But again, this would have to be done because the creator believes in federation as a long term solution. It certainly would benefit creators personally to have a backup they're more in charge of. The difficulty is they don't seem to know it's a viable option.

Make it easier to find an instance to sign up for?

Search up front.

We need to make it more profitable to post on peertube than to post on yt.

I’m trying to get some of the bigger FOSS game developers to use PeerTube for their videos, but it ain’t easy. I’m actually surprised at how many of them don’t have a presence on any of the FOSS social media platforms.

I don't think it's possible to seriously compete with youtube. Youtube would actually have to die first.

If Peertube has the Breadtube (Breadtube is dead, long live Breadtube) and Magic: the Gathering content I want to watch I'll use it.

Lots of great content. (And maybe exclusive content so people have to go there.) I think concerning functionality, it's pretty alright as is.

Piracy.