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.)
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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I say this everytime someone talks about peertube. You should not need to leave the website to use the website. If I search "crazy guy uses rake to play football", and it's not in the results page, I'm not going to go to ANOTHER website, to search THIS website, for a guy who doesn't understand how to play sports.
Yeah, I agree.
When it comes to building a fediverse service there's a really delicate balance to find with making it unambiguous you're engaging with multiple services, vs creating a singular and cohesive enough user experience, and it seems like the peertube devs just learn reaaally far towards the former at the expense of the latter.
Its a bit frustrating.
Edit: I learned from another user on this thread that sepia search can be enabled by an instance as their search functionality. That definitely helps
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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.
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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:
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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
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.
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.
Seems difficult to build it as a social media if it's inherently unsocial.
Who said YOU could say words???
revokes your right to comment
We'll be having none of that interaction, and social stuff here!!!!
.......why isn't peertube taking off???
(/joke)
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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.
This is the issue with federated youtube. It should ALL be federated, and all searchable, mandatory.
Now if I the user decide I don't want to see an instance/video/creator, I should have two options.
Block - Used for when content offends you. It has zero place being in your feed.
Not Interested - Used when content isn't offensive per se, but you really don't care about it either. It's not completely blocked from your feed, but it's certainly not getting first dibs to show up from now on.
This leaves one thing that some may feel is an issue. Lets say there were a small dicked loser who did nazi salutes in public, and wanted to upload hateful content. Lets give him a random name for the sake of simplicity. Let's call him.....Elon. Hypothetical name.
So lets say small dicked Elon, starts uploading hateful content. On youtube you would report him. On peertube, since he owns the hosted server, you'd be reporting him to himself. Which is as you can imagine, useless.
So from here, you block them, and then you never have to see their hateful content ever again.
Because their rise, only comes from people giving these people attention.
Yes!
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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
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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.
Which is silly because most instances will auto mirror your YouTube channel. Literally takes no effort to post to both.
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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
Its growing like crazy. Try the app they just released. It uses some search that works better than instance search
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I created !peertube@lemmy.world in case anyone finds channels, videos, ect that they like.
We can help with the discovery!
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.
I couldn't even get an account on the instance I most wanted because they seem to only give accounts to creators. So now I cannot follow anyone on that instance, or like their videos, or comment. So I have to figure out what other instance I can get an account on and follow from there, hoping they federated with each other.
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Yeah the search is the worst part. As others have said the technology is there, we just need a better search.
The other issue is Lemmy (and perhaps other platforms) has issues with Peertube channels. I can't direct link Peertube for activityhub posts. Lemmy is a no go. !teddy_the_dog@piped.chrisco.me Piefed for example works: https://piefed.social/c/teddy_the_dog@piped.chrisco.me
I host one and don't plan on taking it down anytime soon! If anyone likes dog videos: @teddy_the_dog@piped.chrisco.me
He's a good boy.
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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.
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