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?
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It’s both horrible discovery and a limited number of creators.
But, for discoverability, https://sepiasearch.org/ might help you find things to watch, since it’s the only good multi-server search I’ve seen. (And run by the peertube devs.)
It’s both horrible discovery and a limited number of creators.
100%. I created my own instance and set it to auto-follow other instances. There’s like 975 or something and still not really much interesting. Can confirm TILVids also denied my federation request.
I’m doing my part by uploading my own videos 🙂
If I set it the discovery to “trending” the top video is 2 years old 🤷
Sort by “hot”. And also, check this list out for content: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15810205
Also also, you can still follow channels on tilvids.com, from your own instance, by following the channel’s handle.
If I go to the TILvids channels, the last 6 months of videos are missing.
Do you have an example?
If I go to The Linux Experiment via peertube.wtf, I can see many years of videos.
From what instance is that?
Mine
That view of The Linux Experiment is quite similar to the view from lemmy.ml, with the latest post also being from 9 months ago. I wonder if your PeerTube instance and Lemmy 0.19.x have the same problem, where “something changed” at PeerTube, and new videos stopped appearing at federated sites that didn’t change to accommodate the update. Are you running an old PeerTube version?
Nope
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Sepia Search is something that’s also build into PeerTube, if the admin have enabled Global Search. Sepia Search uses this list of instances: https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances
The same can be enabled in PeerTube. You can see here, that I have it enabled on my instance:
I’m so glad you pointed this out. I did not have this enabled on mine and I forgot about this option completely. I just enabled it.
Ah cool. I never noticed that option, but that certainly improves things.
That should probably either be default or a thing asked on setup since I’d wager most people probably actually do want that.
i found sepia search to be very good! i noticed the ios peertube app seems to have integrated it so a lot more videos are discoverable. @ellyxir@humanwords.cc
The discoverability is incredibly bad. Peertube has a ton of videos and more servers than lemmy by a long shot iirc. The problem is that the „frontend“ has seen no love like ever. There recently came an app which is nice but otherwise, its very underloved.
Feel free to voice your concerns in !peertube@lemmy.ml for example. The devs should be available through the fedi somewhere.
You should go here https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/ or here https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube to raise concerns.
Thank you very much! I love the cooperation in the fedi.
Is there a non ml community? I try to avoid the “genocide is ok when China does it” instances
Yes someone suggested !peertube@lemmy.wtf and world seems to have one as well.
The frontend is nice, I actually enjoy it. Lots of functionality and fairly easy to navigate.
The problem is the culture around peertube instance: most owners are copying each other by not federating or allowing users to easily upload videos.
Essentially, most of the admins are afraid to actually host a video platform so they do anything in their power to prevent others from using it.
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.
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
Take a look here for an instance: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115 And take a look here, under gaming, which instances they use: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15810205
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.
Isn’t it the exact same thing on YouTube?
You have a user account, which can have x numbers of channels.
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.
Ah okay, so you can also upload videos to your username channel?
yea Youtube lets you use the same name, but the extra organization that Peertube gives seems pretty cool too
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”
yea that’s basically what I did
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/
Both.
Peertube made this asinine decision to make federating opt-in, so most instances are just places where the owner can jerk themselves off for excluding everything.
That seems… like a poor choice.
We use it in our company because we don’t want to upload videos only we use to Google.
So it’s more useful as a video player than a YouTube replacement?
Well, it is used mainly to share videos so we don’t have to send them or save them directly to file server. I’d say it has many of the features YT has, so I would say it is possible to replace YT with it, but the problem with videos - as opposed to images or text - is that they take fuckton of space.
Yes and no.
By default anyone can follow your instance.
If you want your instance to follow others, you either have to type them in manually or use “auto-follow”, which needs to be enabled manually.
I would not recommend using tilvids.com. They do not federate with anyone and do not have global search enabled, which means search only shows videos from tilvids.com. It is however, possible to follow channels from tilvids.com from other platforms (instances).
Simply copy the link from tilvids.com and paste it into the search bar of an instance that has global search enabled.
Platforms can also follow channels directly from tilvids and the videos will show up on said platform.
Discoverability can be a bit finicky on PeerTube. Especially if you don’t know how to fine tune the filters.
If you take a look at this list: https://peertube.wtf/home and this one https://lemmy.wtf/post/15810205, you’ll see that there’s plenty of content creators to follow. I discover new ones almost every day.
There really isn’t any other big content creators on PeerTube, other than The Linux Experiment, but if you wanna see your favorite creator on PeerTube, ask them.
If you are looking for a platform (instance) to register on, I recommend looking at this list: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115
I just rejoined PeerTube after I had a quick look years ago, and it’s gotten way better since then, actually. I found out Space Quest Historian is on it, too!
But yeah, discoverability isn’t good. Lack of an algorithm also makes bingewatching impossible - for better and worse, I guess.
As you linked them, I’d also recommend peertube.wtf - they even reacted very quickly when I reported a transphobic german conspiracy channel/server.
That’s my instance! :D
Oh :D
Well, you are doing a great job, and I like what I have seen so far! Keep up the good work!
Simply copy the link from tilvids.com
…what link?
The link of the channel or the channel handle.
Just horrible discovery leading creators to abandon the platform.
Yeah, that must be it. It’s a real shame because the core technology seems to be solid. Streaming 1080p videos from other instances just works. But finding channels to follow seems impossible.
I had the exact same experience including the videos you linked to. There was nothing to be found.
It’s really just missing a great instance. Most of them look really shady or are not accepting new users.
There are no great instances because all federation is opt-in.
There’s also no general, standard “Peertube affiliated” instance that tries to federate with as many others as possible.
I think there were just some very poor design decisions made for the platform by people who don’t know what they’re doing.
Ex: Blurring sensitive videos blurs the title as well, without the option to change it.
The community doesn’t help because most instances have “request an account” nonsense or literally don’t allow users to upload videos.
I re-iterate my previous comment: “most instances are just places where the owner can jerk themselves off for excluding everything.”
There will be great peertube instances, but the culture needs to change first.
That said, check out https://dalek.zone/. It’s one of the few peertube instances I’ve come across that legitimately seems interested in making it a viable platform. Registrations and uploading new videos don’t require approval, and it federates with way more instances than average.
Do we need to start over? Like fork PeerTube and fix all the “We choose to do this wrong because our parents didn’t hug us as children” problems?
No, I don’t think it’s anywhere near that bad.
I just think that going forward, Peertube developers and instance owners should make the platform more accessible and interconnected.
It’s a bigger responsibility to actually host content instead of just links to content, which I don’t think most peertube instance owners can handle.
But federating with other instances IS links to content, not hosting content.
I’m actually referring to both. Instance owners are afraid to allow users to host content and they’re afraid to link to servers that host content.
So why run an instance in the first place then?
Good question. My honest answer is 🧩.
I’ve seen it enough in the tech sphere to recognize it for what it is.
Check out the pinned posts here: !peertube@lemmy.wtf for info on instances that fits your needs.
You can mouse over the blurred title and see what it is.
Most established hosters would be fearful to run an instance of peertube. Costs could balloon out of nowhere and would only increase with time. There is no way donations would keep up with costs, and charging to watch or a subscription would never take off.
Check the out the pinned post here about instances: !peertube@lemmy.wtf
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.
Its growing like crazy. Try the app they just released. It uses some search that works better than instance search
It uses sepia search to search all instances that have opted into being searched.
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Check out the two pinned posts here: !peertube@lemmy.wtf
I just checked that out and am Fry ng to make a decision but am confused about storage space for users. What do people use peertube storage space for and/or why might I want it?
Storage is for videos you upload. If you don’t intend to upload video, you should just go for a PeerTube platform (instance/server) that federates with as many other as possible.
Thanks! That actually changes which server I was going to use lol
I think peer tube federation is opt in not opt out like most other services.
The PeerTube admin chooses which other platforms they follow. They can also control who can follow them.
Try the app, it’s a little better
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.
