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?

  • commander@lemmings.world
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    4 days ago

    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.

    • TeddE@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Seems difficult to build it as a social media if it’s inherently unsocial.

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        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)

      • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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        4 days ago

        It’s not unsocial. It’s just not mirroring multi-gigabyte files by default. It’s perfectly social if you use the website.

        Everyone has to stop conflating the technology with the network. Lemmy is a website engine. PeerTube is a website engine. The ability to mirror content is not inherent to running a Lemmy- or PeerTube-based website. The network is not the primary object here.

        It is a construct that arrises from content-mirroring.

        Remember, federation is copying, not creating some kind of remote view. If you’re federating videos, you’re letting other websites consume terabytes of your storage space amd bandwidth.

        • Meldrik@lemmy.wtf
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          3 days ago

          Remember, federation is *copying*, not creating some kind of remote view. If you’re federating videos, you’re letting other websites consume terabytes of your storage space amd bandwidth.

          That is not true, at all.

          • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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            3 days ago

            It’s literally what federation is. It’s why discovery doesn’t work the way people expect.

            Do you mean to say that PeerTube at least embeds videos? Because that’s news to me, and welcomed news at that

            • Meldrik@lemmy.wtf
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              3 days ago

              Yes, video is streamed directly from its home server. There is a an option to mirror videos, so that your server will work as a seed, helping with bandwidth.

              Images on Lemmy is also loaded from its home server, but there is a cache.

  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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    5 days ago

    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 [email protected] for example. The devs should be available through the fedi somewhere.

  • rocky1138@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    It’s really just missing a great instance. Most of them look really shady or are not accepting new users.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      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.

    • Ulrich@feddit.org
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      5 days ago

      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 🤷

  • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    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.

    • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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      5 days ago

      Important: you do not need to have an account on a peertube instance. You can follow from nearly (iirc) any fedi instance. I have successfully done so from mastodon and I have heard lemmy should work, not sure though. You just copy the address of the channel you want to follow from the browser and paste it in your search bar on mastodon.

          • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            How about basic usability considerations? Nobody is going to switch if this is the user experience. And if no users are subscribing and interacting why would content creators spend time posting to it?

            If people want it to be a thriving community then it needs functionality that makes it a community. I shouldn’t have to creat an account on a server I don’t want content from in hopes that I’ll be able to subscribe and interact with a server I do want content from.

            I’m an established fediverse user, I have been rolling my own Linux servers for decades. I’m perfectly capable of dealing with imperfect systems. This is a shit user experience and if nobody says so it will never be fixed and peertube will wither and die.

            • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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              5 days ago

              Although I do understand the idea. but you really need to check your ego, mate.

              Just offer help or suggest different ways than it is currently done. If you have the faintest idea of hosting and/or programming, this is not how to get your way.

              So stop bitching and start working or shut the fuck up.

              • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                😆

                That’ll show the big corporations how it’s done. I’m sure they’re shaking in their boots at a platform that demands their users are programers or live with how crappy it is.

                • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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                  5 days ago

                  You‘re avoiding my point because you know I‘m right. We dont want corpo apologists here. Foss software is dependent on cooperation. Cooperate or leave.

                  In any case, you’re leaving my feed now.