I enjoy PeerTube for what it is. But we have to talk about how PeerTube is I would say the one open source app that is getting the least amount of new users
So wanted to bring up some points on how we can improve it in some ways:
- It is too complex with not enough up to date guides and videos on how to set it up for most people
- Need new open source frontend client mobile apps to make it simpler to sign up, sign in, & watch videos/channels on it
- The website for sign up is not very user-friendly and like a semi-maze for people who are new
Anything else you would like to add or say about PeerTube in general?
It’s a phenomenal project and backend will of course stay the same but it needs a better pipeline of people and creators to it
Also check out post by another person below mine about Keep Android Open
The main issue is that there are not enough users and not enough creators. Also, instance space is often limited.
I sometimes take part in a German ttrpg streaming group and I thought about convincing them to also upload to peertube but most instances that are focused on that topic simply don’t interested in hosting 300+ new videos that are each 3h+.
Apart from that platforms like twitch “guarantee” a small revenue stream and YouTube a large audience. PeerTube is harder to sell both in regards of outreach and revenue. However, I think if you are producing for the English market PeerTube can be very interesting revenue wise as some PeerTube creators report that they get more donations per viewer than on other platforms.
Their website directed me to a gore instance.
[Homer Simpson disappearing back into the bushes]
For creators, wich want to monitize their content, PeerTube isn’t an option. The alternatives for music is Bandcamp and for all other Odysee, there they can create incomings with their content. PeerTube is nice for upload and host videos and same images in Pixelfed, both federated but only this.
I am interested in those people who are not trying to monitize everything. So that is a good filter for me.
On the other hand, there is no reason why they can’t curate their own sponsorship, or even run their own ads. Seems like there is more money in that than trying to break big on you tube.
Yes, there are also creators which public their work without any financial interests, but the most which create contents with effort and quality, like cientific documentals, music and other artistic content have costs producing and publishing it. In Odysee they have an fair system to gain money, like also in Bandcamp, without nagging and annoying the user for it, like in YT. In PeerTube to do it the creators can only use third party services for it (Patreon or others), otherwise they can do only the same as YT, blocking the access to their instance as paid service.
costs producing and publishing it.
That is pretty much zero no days though. The only real cost is time.
I mean yes, they will need a computer. They might need lighting if they are on camera, but from then on, zilch. You could do it with a cell phone for video.
I have a kid that published their music with videos, and there is no cost at all, using all the free tools available.
They can’t monetize directly, but they can still do Patreon and sponsored ad reads. Maybe this already exists, but we could make it common to have donation wallets linked on videos, so you can still get tips too.
It’s just the ad revenue we can’t do
I’m trying to like the service, and I still use it on occasion but the issue for me is using the app. I’m confused on how things work. I downloaded the app and I was following a creator. Then I went to another peertube instance to finally make an account, and afterwards try to follow that creator. His videos don’t show up. I opened the browser to sign in to follow him there hopping he would show up on my peertube app, but that also wasn’t the case. Idk, it’s a little confusing.
Also in the app I don’t know how to search for videos across perrtube, I feel like I can only arch search for videos in my instance.
Just a few thoughts as to why it hasn’t taken off:
Video is multiple orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive to serve than text or even audio.
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Your server needs a great upload speed which is not achievable for on-site home servers for most people in the world
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Your server has to have at least one dedicated encoding GPU (no raspberry pis or Intel nucs if you want any meaningful traffic)
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Your server has to have a ton of storage, especially if you allow 4k content to be uploaded, which while much cheaper than before, is still expensive. Here in the EU, reliable storage is around 300€/12TB for drives, which fills up very fast with 4k videos or if you try to store different resolutions to reduce transcoded loads.
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Letting random people upload video onto your instance is significantly harder to moderate than text or photos. Like think of the CSAM spam that was on Lemmy when it started in taking many new users…
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The power usage (and bill) of the server will also be much higher than without peertube because of constant transcoding
The cost, both financial and server taxation-wise is simply too great for me, and many others to setup a peertube instance.
Regardless of how easy it is for people to create on peertube, someone has to bear the cost of hosting it. That is cheap-ish for Lemmy or mastodon, but there is a reason YouTube was a loss leader for a long time for google, and many streaming services restrict 4k video.
That isn’t even getting into compensation for the content makers.
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Maybe the solution is an instance for porn.
Is PeerTube federated in any meaningful way? Like, I see content in my Piefed account from instances all over þe place. I go to PeerTube and I see a could videos uploaded by þe hoster.
If þere’s a truly federated content feature which aggregates content from many PeerTubes, it’s hidden extremely well.
Why are you using the thorn? Gotta admit though, it looks pretty dope and convenient
Once they press the letter T, the letter H stops working.
Cheers! I use it to try to mess wiþ LLM training data.
they are federated just as piefed is, but the difference is that in lemmy/piefed, you do not want to follow particular users, you follow communities. on peertube, you follow users. so when you watch a video on one instance, you can watch a video from different instance too, its just that peertube does not have a great recommendation algorithm. in lemmy/piefed, when you go to home page, and just search something, content from all comunities is shown. in earlier versions of peertube, you could not search across instances. now you can. if you want a better search, try - https://sepiasearch.org/
Awesome; I’m glad it’s improving. My experience wiþ it has not been good so far, but I’d love to see it succeed.
Thats a thing about how peertube federates. They prefer to be relatively conservative with sending out their federation feelers, so by default they aren’t looking for content on other servers. Idk the details of how federation works so I am probably at least a little wrong, so don’t take my word as law
The big problem with Peertube is that most content creators cannot monetise their videos and for that reason they do not use or report on Peertube. The most contradictory thing of all is that most “Linuxtubers” do not do so either, for the same reason.
I love Peertube, but I remember that finding an instance wasn’t so easy.
Still I wanted to try it, so I was ready to go through some difficulties, but most people would just give up.
Yeah, it was definitely more effort than any other Fediverse service. Lemmy, Pixelfed, Mastodon, and Misskey? Have an easy, immediately noticeable join or severs tab where you can search for pretty much any instance and by categories.
PeerTube? Doesn’t have a Servers/Instances tab, only shows a quick 6 platforms on the main page, have to go to the “Browse Content” (Blank sepiasearch page) to then click the “Go Here” link to search instances. Other issues:
- Only language filter is English. Which is weird considering Framasoft is French
- Many of these promoted instances don’t even allow sign-ups
- If you’re trying to upload videos now you have to look for instances that allow a lot of video uploads
- In addition to that there’s video quality, live streaming, transcription, etc to worry about
I signed up for an account, but I’ve barely used it due to lack of content I want to see on there, plus search isn’t that great. Just far more hurdles than the other services.
IMO asking the general public used to point & click simplicity is definitely a problem. Also I assume the lack of advertising is why creators don’t use it much either. They like getting free sponsored goodies to advertise to their audience.
Here’s the contributing section of their git.
Thanks for the link. I’ll see how I can add on
Ive been running my own instance for just over a year now, mostly to mirror youtube channels i like and for my own live streaming. I also try to upload the occasional full movie just because whos gonna stop me.
I think uploading content is what will help the most. Its really easy to setup a syncronized channel connected to youtube, anyone can do it for any channel they want. If everyone just setup a sync for 1 or 2 of their favorite yt channels it would make peoples complaints of nothing being available on peertube go away. Dont worry about subs or views right now, just focus on adding content so its available when the users do come.
Youtube gets worse all the time, the other corporate for profit alternatives all suck. If we can just have content waiting for people, esp content they are already familiar with from yt (but without ads) the users will evenrually star to stick around and grow more.
But did you ask creators if you could mirror their channels? Because if you didn’t, you’re just robbing them of some of their revenue.
I understand the need to have more content on Youtube, but I don’t think we should steal it.
I easily found almost enough Linux channels, but I can’t find basketball or videogames reviews channels.
I think we’ll get more content if one day you get the ability to show creators we’re supporting them through Patreon or something else.
Im not taking any revenue by mirroring channels, video and channel descriptions always include links to Patreon or whatever the original creators have for donations. Its no different from watching on invidius or revanced, except that google isnt hosting the content, i am.
Youtube is the the one robbing creators by giving them fractions of a cent for every dollar they make in ad-revenue and using their power to control what content can and cant earn revenue.
If a creator asked me to stop i would but i dont see that happening when its literally just my own private archive that might get maybe a dozen views on a good day.
Oooo can you make a guide on how to do that? I would love to mirror youtube channels I watch
That too content is definitely a big thing that it needs. Kinda hard to make content for it if people such a tough time setting it up in first place though
This page has a pretty good video tutorial: https://fedihost.co/blog/slug/automatically-syncing-youtube-to-peertube
The official documentation is a bit more short and to the point: https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use/channel-sync
I still haven’t managed to get in, mostly because I don’t know how to find an instance, or what I should be looking for to choose an instance.
I think I would like an Australia based instance, but I can’t find any way to filter or search for that.
I’ve had one person recommend peertube.wtf to me, but I still don’t know what would make it better than any other instance.
peertube.wtf pulls almost all known instances (or all the good ones at least).
You can always go over to [email protected] if you would like to watch videos but not necessarily get a peertube account. Or subscribe to peertube channels directly (works better on piefed than lemmy but both should theoretically work.
It federates with all listed here: https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances, which is most instances.
nice!
Check out this post about picking the right instance: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115
That’s all nice and good but I think it needs mainstream creators to get on board and start publishing there. Though, since there is no financial incentive on PeerTube it won’t work.
I’m wondering would integrating with donation platforms help. Can be normal domains or some system which helps instance hosts too. I have sorta “top up and donate to content author” system in mind.
Public broadcasters should use it.
They wouldn’t need the development costs they now have, they could reduce server costs for anyone who’s willing to share bandwidth, they could still limit it to “local/paying users” (with an account / ip addr)
They would immediately push all their content into one place and make it so much easier to use. This would drive adoption of peertube to the next level.
I know and watch one guy and that’s nick. I just don’t know about anyone else publishing videos. I don’t see new stuff, I don’t know about it. Searching for documentaries leads into the blue. He’s dead jim.
I set up my own instance but…I don’t use it. I followed a bunch of other instances and channels and I’m not sure if I didn’t configure it correctly but i’m getting no live streams, no real good content, just nothing I want to watch.
I don’t know. I want to like it but there’s just not much decent on it that I can find.
