I love the idea, but most servers only host a couple of videos, it’s very hard to find enjoyable content on there and it’s difficult to figure out which server could be a good server to make an account on…
I wouldn’t mind a centralized aggregator of videos and maybe it could have a suggestions algorithm as well or whatever. Not that this would be ideal in the long term but it could help get the videos some views and make more content creators see this as a good alternative. It’s not safe on youtube, people aren’t even saying suicide anymore ffs
Edit: Even some renowned german media have their own peertube servers that they feed with high quality videos, but of course they have basically 0 views. (https://peertube.heise.de/, https://tube.taz.de/)
Since peertube isn’t backed by native torrents (only webtorrents which aren’t used by most torrenters), it means that individual servers are bearing an immense amount of hosting costs: hard drive space on VPS’s, network bandwidth, encoding, etc.
This is a completely unsustainable model if you look at how much these things cost the people running them. 100GB alone of space on a VPS can cost more than $40 / month. and that’s just a handful of videos.
Torrents have already solved this problem years ago, by distributing these costs among hundreds of seeders on their own personal computers. All that’s needed is for people to learn how to seed their own videos, and post magnet links around.
That solves distribution but still leaves discoverability.
Magnet links are fine for discoverability, you can post them on any platform (even this one), and there are a ton of good torrent specific search engines also.
Peertube has been very difficult to setup and get going. Even just logging into the app. There’s a MUCH better option from FUTO called Grayjay. Grayjay is unreal. Check it out.
Take a look over at: https://piefed.social/f/fediversevideos if you want to see a collection of videos from a wide variety of instances.
I like subscribing to channels via piefed OR on my home peertube server and use it like youtube subscriptions. I pick the best (or to me interesting) and post it over at !peertube@lemmy.world .
https://peertube.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=365
Overall peertube is seeing a gradual increase in number of users and servers getting started up. Although its hard to tell with servers starting to implement anti AI and tracking software (makes it hard to find out numbers on certain trackers).
Because of the friction for new users don’t understanding federation basis. Because of creators not having monetary revenue from advertiser on it. Beause of creators not having viewer on this service and thus cannot switch completely. Because people are lazy and YouTube works for most of them (until it become unusable)
Because of the friction for new users don’t understanding federation basis.
This. Is. Not. Necessary. To. Use. The. Fediverse.
I’m so tired of people repeating this endlessly
I agree, but it’s the reality I observe with my friends. I tell them it’s like e-mail it does not matter where you sign in you can access the whole federation from pretty much every instance. They still asks me if X or Z instance is great etc…
I think most of the reasons can be classified as there is no incentive for content creators to post videos, other than ideological purity. And the creators of peertube absolutely will not use underhanded tactics to drive growth.
That will sound inconsequential to most peertube fans, which is part of the problem.
But there is a reason why YouTube is hard to compete against, and one does not win that using the high ground
It’s not that I “don’t understand federation basics”. It’s that PeerTube is absolutely, utterly devoid of content, and what less-than-bare-minimum content is there feels near-impossible to find. My standards for “enough content” aren’t YouTube’s lifetime worth of content uploaded every 12 hours; they’re “$30 annually for Nebula”.
The one or two extant channels I may want to watch consistently are on YouTube, so I already have to either 1) have a better experience watching those on PeerTube or 2) sacrifice on principle to watch them there. It’s going to have to be (2), but unlike YouTube, I can’t just jump off over to PeerTube and search for those channels. Instead, they need to be federated with the instance I’m on, which is a total crapshoot in PeerTube.
PeerTube’s niche audience doesn’t just make it subject to very little content; it also means the type of content is much more constrained. For example, those two-ish channels both center largely around digital privacy and FOSS. The content can pretty much be divided into: 1) random shit stolen from YouTube, 2) extremely amateurish videos, 3) person gives a rant about politics 4) actually decently produced videos but on a topic that’s at an extreme of (i) absurdly niche or (ii) generic enough to be found anywhere, and 5) (exceedingly rarely) real quality because the uploader is mirroring from their YouTube channel.
PeerTube instances seem to often just go down out of nowhere. One time I registered to one to give PeerTube another chance, and I chose it after very carefully considering federation. I came back two months later, and what looked like a good, healthy instance had totally vanished. Instances are also hard to find, having random, messy names like “tube.ebin.club” or “diode.zone”.
Comments are practically non-existent. YouTube is what happens when comments are too existent, but I appreciate being able to ignore bigger channels while going into the comments of small channels and seeing people meaningfully discussing the video.
There seems to be almost zero curation for language, so plenty of videos I come across could just be in Finnish or whatever.
PeerTube taken overall feels less like a place I’d want to sit down and stay for an hour a day and more like early YouTube where I’d want to watch a one-off video once a week. I searched for “vegan” for something generic and easy, and after a few of the 930 results, I found this video from a dead channel. Nothing crazy, but also something that’s not “clickbait title with one word in caps under a thumbnail where a red arrow points from white and red text to some image with no context”. It’s very cozy, but the channel has been dead for three years, so what’s there is what’s there.
… because discovery of videos is not solved. Looking for relevant content on Peertube is a chore.
My pet theory is that PeerTube is slower on the uptake because of two primary reasons:
- YouTube Monetization
- Content Production
Many YouTubers are comfortable staying right on YouTube, where they have the maximum impact, audience size, and money-making opportunities. For this group of people, moving off of YouTube just isn’t viable.
Because of this, alternative video platforms have to rely on people who are willing to give PeerTube a shot. This is a combination of early adopters who are also on YouTube, people fed up with YouTube for whatever reason, and people in various social and political bubbles that would benefit from a more dedicated space for the things they care about.
The other thing is, video production is time consuming compared to other social mediums. Microblogging by comparison has incredibly little friction, to the point that people can do it potentially dozens of times per day. Making a quality documentary, review, or soapbox piece? A single episode of that can take multiple weeks or longer.
I actually think PeerTube is seeing some healthy growth, but discovering things I actually want to watch remains a challenge.
We’re going up against 20+ years of entrenched companies with billions of dollars. Most people don’t care, or there’s no money in it for them, or they don’t know, or they don’t understand.
I’m trying personally, video.firesidefedi.live, and professionally, tubefree.org, but it’s difficult, expensive, and opens you up to a lot of potential problems.
Just keep spreading word, being welcoming, find ways you can contribute whatever you can.
We’ll get there. :-)
Yes, for the reasons you mention, plus the difficulty of learning what you’ll find where, and (I hate to say it) the absence of any financial motive for creators or hosts when there are commercial alternatives that will pay you. Because video production and hosting are both relatively expensive the financial side will be even more challenging than for Lemmy and Mastodon hosts.
On yt you get 1$/1k views, that really isn’t a lot.
Imo with more views the creators would earn the same money as on yt with sponsored segments.
Peertube has never worked for me. Every time there’s a link on Lemmy, I follow it but get a generic error about the video not loading or being unavailable.
Do you have an example?
That’s weird. Do you have JavaScript disabled?
Nope. I use a weird browser, though. Orion for iOS. It’s built with WebKit, the same engine safari uses. Other sites work fine.
I made some videos about a trip to Japan I took once, and I uploaded them to YouTube but because I’m an Open Source person I also tried to upload to PeerTube since they’re all CC media. I think the one that was 20 minutes long failed to upload, so I didn’t even try with my hour long ones.
I just decided it wasn’t ready.
As much as YouTube isn’t the friendliest company, I have to give them props at a technical level. I think a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to support something with so many huge files, at different levels of resolution, loading in a second, etc etc.
The only technical problems I have with YouTube are the things they intentionally are doing to try and mess with people.
Where did you try to upload? PeerTube (the software) is very mature and functions just fine.
Probably just some dude’s instance, I probably found it on a list or something of open nodes.
And I’m sure it runs fine, but does it handle long videos with low views?
Yes.
Great! In that case how do I find an instance that’s accepting new users and large files?
Look at pinned post at !peertube@lemmy.wtf
In my experience, it’s mad slow
What instance where you using?
Hmm I have only seen that happen when the origin server of the video is overloaded
Check pinned posts at !peertube@lemmy.wtf
Nice
I think it has a lot to do with that we are trying to copy a model that only works for the mighty. Youtube depends on surveillance automatized algorithms. The surveillance is what makes their service work. This is not a type of algorithm we should copy from youtube. But that is what peertube has done. They rely on an algorithm that plays on surveillance. This means that the peertube experience is subpar.
What we should do instead is rely on algorithms that rely on people actively pointing out to likeminded videos. To let people be the algorithm just like how people were the algorithm of the early web. Perhaps that we associate our channel with other likeminded channels. Or that we actively point people towards the videos we think are relevant to the current video.
But that is what peertube has done. They rely on an algorithm that plays on surveillance.
how so?
