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?

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[–] commander@lemmings.world 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago

That seems... like a poor choice.

[–] rocky1138@sh.itjust.works 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] commander@lemmings.world 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

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.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 53 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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.

[–] commander@lemmings.world 1 points 2 hours ago

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.

[–] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 9 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Is there a non ml community? I try to avoid the "genocide is ok when China does it" instances

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 16 points 19 hours ago

Yes someone suggested !peertube@lemmy.wtf and world seems to have one as well.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 19 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

You should go here https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/ or here https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube to raise concerns.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 8 points 20 hours ago

Thank you very much! I love the cooperation in the fedi.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 13 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Its growing like crazy. Try the app they just released. It uses some search that works better than instance search

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 9 points 12 hours ago

It uses sepia search to search all instances that have opted into being searched.

[–] Madiator2011@lm.madiator.cloud 17 points 22 hours ago

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.

[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 97 points 1 day ago (30 children)

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.)

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[–] erin@social.sidh.bzh 9 points 1 day ago

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.

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