This brainstorm is motivated by two recent discussions:
When is it time to switch away from youtube?
The conversations about YouTube alternatives and PeerTube’s limitations made me test the current state of Lemmy <–> PeerTube federation.
Federation already works quite well: you can pull in PeerTube channels, subscribe, upvote, and comment from Lemmy.
But I did notice one thing. Take this Techlore video on PeerTube:
https://techlore.tv/w/9a7d20d2-4cc1-4911-8fd7-0794d8fe3bd9
-> On PeerTube: 6 upvotes, 4 comments
I pulled the video into my instance and was able to upvote it from there, so federated voting is working well: https://mander.xyz/post/37959974
I then noticed it had also been cross-posted to lemmy.world: https://lemmy.world/post/35205985
-> On lemmy.world: 37 upvotes, 9 comments
So the cross-post has significantly more engagement than the original video. This highlights a visibility issue: PeerTube creators may be getting more reach than they realize, but that engagement is fragmented across federated posts.
Brainstorm
Would it make sense to allow cross-posting of already-federated PeerTube content without breaking the link to the original object?
Upvotes/likes: These could be funneled back into the original PeerTube video, so creators get a true sense of their reach.
Comments: Less clear. Should all comments be merged into the video thread, or should they remain scoped to the Lemmy community they were posted in?
I don’t think this is “GitHub issue” ready, but it seems worth discussing.
I’m going to copy a suggestion I made on their forum here:
Dear PeerTube team,
I’m writing to you because I’ve thought of a business move I think you should consider, and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
I follow several content creators on YouTube who have created their own, monetized streaming platform (Nebula) in order to escape Google’s monopolistic business model. While they are a community of creators and are forced to spend money on developing a streaming site, you have developed a streaming network and are trying to attract communities of creators. I’d like to suggest that you approach them and invite them to port their platform to the PeerTube network. Since building a realistic YouTube contender is in both of your interests, I expect they would be quite open to joining forces.
The only technical change needed to acommodate their needs would be to add into PeerTube the ability to paywall channels (Nebula is a paid subscription). While I understand that paywalls might be against the tastes of an open source platform, it would be a pragmatic move, as getting the Nebula content creators to move to PeerTube would benefit all parties:
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The content creators from Nebula — by moving to PeerTube, would be spared the financial and logistical stress of maintaining their own video streaming website, and be freer to focus on creating content.
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The PeerTube network — Would gain many new, non-technical viewers who are willing to pay for things (as they are all currently paying for Nebula). The viewers and their money would spill over to existing PT creators. What’s more, the Nebula youtubers who are already encouraging people to leave YouTube would now be doing your job of popularizing PeerTube for you.
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Nebula viewers — would now have a wider choice of apps (PT clients) through which to watch their Nebula videos.
I would be curious to hear your thoughts.
Kind regards,
People who make videos on Nebula, usually also publish on YT. Publishing the same videos on PT should be fine, and some people who make linux videos are already doing that.
However, making videos takes time, money and effort, so how would the compensation work on PT? For many people, making videos is more than just a hobby.
People on Nebula may also have exclusive some videos (Nebula Originals), so I think keeping those on Nebula is the only realistic option. People who want to see those videos, can pay for Nebula, and support the channels they like that way.
Well the idea would be for Nebula to become a PT instance that HS a paywall I guess?
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I don’t even understand how to comment on Peertube videos from Lemmy…
All these things are really complicated and I hope it’s gonna be a bit easier soon.
But let’s be honest, Peertubés problem is discoverability of content.
I’ve discovered lately that there is a Firefox extension which lets you use Youtube and signals you when a video is already on Peertube. This could be great.
It does get a little complicated and confusing. And for some reason it only works for some PeerTube instances, not for all…
But, for example, let’s say I like this video: https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/c8c6a9df-121e-4a00-95c1-b7af4beb73a1
By pasting that URL into the search box, the video is brought into the instance as a post. The channel is also pulled as a “locked” community. If anyone in the instance subscribes to that community, then future uploads to the PeerTube channel will be brought into the community.
Look, here is the channel pulled into your instance: https://sh.itjust.works/c/bpt11_channel@tilvids.com
If a user upvotes post, then the original video will get a “like”. If one comments, the comment will appear under the original video.
But let’s be honest, Peertubés problem is discoverability of content.
I’ve discovered lately that there is a Firefox extension which lets you use Youtube and signals you when a video is already on Peertube. This could be great.
Yeah… I have been going through the effort of pulling channels and subscribing to them from within the instance so that future videos also populate the instance. It is some effort to discover these channels, but hopefully over time we can have a nice library of channels interacting with Lemmy.
Good idea honestly, idk anything about how it would work but you should post this on the lemmy devs page and see if they could add it somewhere down the line.
They usually get a response back within a day or two and it will at least give you an idea of whether or not its technically possible, and if it is, an idea of what the timeframe would look like based on their current update schedule.
Id love to get peertube spread throughout my feeds. My biggest reason for not using it was the fact I’d have to use a different platform and my device is already maxed out on storage. Here’s hoping it would be a quick fix!
Thanks. Yeah, I was thinking of writing this as an “enhancement” issue, but figured it might be worth to refine this before bringing it up there.
Id love to get peertube spread throughout my feeds. My biggest reason for not using it was the fact I’d have to use a different platform and my device is already maxed out on storage. Here’s hoping it would be a quick fix!
I’ve been looking for channels, pulling them into the instance, and subscribing to try to increase the number of channels in my feed.
Piefed you can comment and vote but its the same deal as lemmy. A cross post is a separate thing. So any interaction will only go to the cross post. Its a but better visually than Lemmy though.
I like it.
I find the feature of pulling comments from cross-posts even more desirable now that I see how it interfaces with PeerTube videos, pulling the comment history as well. I still think that improvements can be made. With regular cross-posts, you have different people sharing the same link, often to a resource outside of the Fediverse. But, in the case of a federated piece of content such as a PeerTube video, the original does live within the fediverse. There is a master post, which is the video itself. I feel like there is some way to design a special kind of fedi-cross post that allows to share with a community without breaking the interaction… At least for upvotes.
