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?

  • Jerry on PieFed@feddit.onlineEnglish
    23·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
      9·
      1 month ago

      what’s the best peertube instance to upload gaming videos to? I might upload some and see how it goes

      edit: I think I’m gonna go with spectra, but omg this is annoying:

      Channel identifier cannot be the same as your account name. You can click on the first step to update your account name.

      I get it, they’re separate actors, but still annoying. Can people find my channel by either name? Edit2: yes they can, all the user’s channels are listed on the user profile, which maybe makes it worth the signup annoyance

      • Meldrik@lemmy.wtfEnglish
        2·
        1 month ago

        Isn’t it the exact same thing on YouTube?

        You have a user account, which can have x numbers of channels.

        • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          1 month ago

          YouTube is a bit different because you can use your username as your channel name, and then you can have multiple “brands” that aren’t linked to your username. People can’t find those from your main account.

            • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
              3·
              1 month ago

              yea Youtube lets you use the same name, but the extra organization that Peertube gives seems pretty cool too

      • e0qdk@reddthat.comEnglish
        2·
        1 month ago

        As someone who watches gaming footage on PeerTube, I’ve mostly interacted with single creator instances – i.e. either the creator themselves is self-hosting it or it’s run by a fan as a non-YT backup of their Twitch/Owncast/whatever VODs. Those instances generally do not allow anyone else to upload.

        Discoverability sucks but the way I’ve found them is by using SepiaSearch and looking for specific words from game titles. I imagine the way most other people find them is that they already know the content creator from Twitch and want to find an old VOD that isn’t archived on YT (e.g. because of YT’s bullshit copyright system) – but that’s just a guess.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        1 month ago

        Would that mean you need an account name to be Die4Ever and your channel identifier might be Die4Ever_Games?

        That would actually solve a problem I had on Youtube, where, I’ll use Linus Media Group as an example, Tech Linked and Mac Address were different unrelated Youtube channels. Youtube has no concept of “Shows”

    • Meldrik@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      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.