Admittedly a risky crosspost, but cannot find conflicting community rules. I believe the possible discussion justifies it.
cross-posted from: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/peertube@piefed.blahaj.zone/p/999813/what-s-stopping-you-from-using-peertube
Or ‘What is PeerTube lacking that you simply cannot do without?’
I believe it’s a safe assumption that fediverse users want to move away from the monopolies and closed gardens so often associated with video streaming, and yet it’s not a task that’s ever been made easy. Maybe an ounce of inspiration is the cue we need, and so my question to you is; What’s Stopping you from using PeerTube?
The content I want to watch.
Ultimately, it’s the lack of any real reason to use it.
As a user, there’s no content on any PeerTube instances that I’m particularly interested in. Or if there is, I have no realistic way of locating it because the search/discovery features are effectively non-functional; unless you’re really into 3-hour videos titled “A Deep Dive into Every Reason why Richard Stallman was Right”, the recommendations are otherwise useless. There’s also no features that interest me that aren’t also available on any other platform I consume video from.
As a small creator (under 500 followers across 3 platforms), there’s no audience to show my content to on PeerTube, and no real way to gain an audience. There’s effectively zero exposure opportunities on PeerTube, and unless you already have a large audience that you can convince to move to a new platform, then nobody’s going to see your content. Even though I’m not making videos for any monetary gain and doing it purely because it’s fun for me, a big part of that fun comes from the engagement I get to have with the community. And if that community isn’t going to be active on PeerTube, then neither will I; this was the reason I stopped posting to Loops.
If I were a larger creator, or somebody whose income relied on video creation, then I would have even less inclination to use PeerTube because the monetization capabilities are basically nonexistent. Yes, you can add a KoFi link to your channel details, but you can also draw a QR code to your KoFi link on a cardboard sign and stand by the traffic lights for all that’s worth; in fact, I think that would actually still give you MORE exposure than PeerTube would, and you don’t even have to make videos to do that.
While I generally agree with the ideology behind PeerTube and want to see it succeed, it’s just not in any practical state for me, no matter which angle I look at it from.
I feel like the only content creators that would want Peertube are either those who want to post videos and fundamentally hate the algorithm platforms and those who have been deplatformed and need a quick way to get content up for their audience.
If I want to host videos on PeerTube, I want to do so on my own instance, and the process of setting up your own instance is not as easy as I would like. I’ve tried it a few times, ran into a wall, gave up and went back to YouTube with my tail between my legs.
Peertube is Youtube 20 years ago.
Cool but lacks of content and creators
videos
videos ain’t that the truth
It’s nearly impossible to find new stuff that interests me on it.
Never really heard of it, and nothing exists quite like YouTube and Nebula for decent long-form content.
If I were a video creator I certainly wouldn’t self-host on an ActivityPub platform.
there’s no content, because there’s no audience, because there’s no content.
the support youtube gives just in terms of traffic and storage is something peertube can never hope to achieve without big centralised instances.
Eh. I think the bigger deal is that the large platforms, including YouTube, give large content creators a cut of the ads. YouTube has had to deal with competition and part of that competition has been to pay content creators, even if it isn’t a lot.
well yeah, if there’s no pay there’s no way to sustainably produce for the platform.
The times I tried it I did not see anything remotely interesting. Then I checked again after knowing how these federated networks work and it was the same but I wondered, do I have to make an account somewhere in order to not having to check every single instance? Does it even use instances the same way as lemmy or piefed? How do I find more instances?
In the end, there were too many questions and very little desire to look for the answers.
Because it functions poorly as a way to see a lot of content that I want to see.
If there is a way to see/browse all of the content available on peertube all at once, I am unaware of it.
If there’s a way to curate my feed such that it pulls from multiple decentralized instances, I am unaware of it.
Make it very easy for me to see everything, make it easy for me to curate my feed from that everything available.
My peerness is too small
Youtube has a deep well of art because it’s motivated by capitalism and has been around longer.
People who create on peertube are motivated by art more purely but that means there’s considerably less of them. It’s going to be a long project getting to that state of critical mass where we just explore peertube to find something novel.
I’ve tried searching PeerTube a number of times, basically once a year, but no matter what topic I search for all I get are weird, stupid videos not even remotely related to what i want. From what i can tell there is no high quality content on the platform, and that makes me sad so i give up on it very quickly.
I’ve tried to use peertube a few times. I just can’t figure it out. I open to and search for things like “Ms. Rachel”, for my daughter but nothing comes up. I don’t use Youtube much and would like to stop entirely, but I just can’t find any of the stuff I’m looking for on peertube
I need more variety. I have a peertube account but I couldn’t find musician and art videos on there as easily as YouTube. Maybe give it another few years and let it build up more content. Plus, creators need a way to make money off of it or it won’t prosper. Donations are sufficient for some but I won’t give up supporting creators on YouTube.
