For most other formats, everyone creates and shares: photos, posts, sharing links. For more crafted video material, there’s too much of an imbalance between the number of watchers vs creators to make a new platform an easy sell. You’d need a strong creator promise like Nebula.
hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
Peertube isn’t really a viable alternative. There isn’t a substantial enough audience for creators and there isn’t really enough content for an audience. I guess if you’re one of the 100 people watching transport evolved that’s cool but it isn’t really a meaningful alternative. I suppose it could be supplementary, but why would creators want to drive their traffic to a site that doesn’t actually matter for their visibility? I imagine the same probably applies to loops.
Also, like, with video you kind of want a reliable host that you know isn’t going anywhere.
The rest are okay as long as you’re not super worried about how many people are seeing what you post. Lemmy and Piefed are great for content aggregation and discussion, but they seem to be the only ones that at this point actually do anything that might be helpful.
I’ve tried Mastodon and while it’s way better than Twitter it isn’t exactly providing a way to reach a substantial audience. Personal websites are probably a better bet for ease of access.
BaroqueW@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 hours ago
Yeah, agreed. The one thing the platforms you see that aren’t YouTube that creators actually use have in common is financial incentive. Nebula is the best example here. Creators get a cut and have more creative freedom, so they actually use it and try to direct their audience to it for bonus content, which seems to actually work. Patreon is similar for a lot of creators, letting them put out additional content with fewer restrictions and letting them get more income from their viewers.
Some people also seem to have some success with independent platforms. If you look at like a Dropout or Viva Plus, these are both putting stuff out on YouTube and then drawing users in with subscriptions, and that seems to be a sound model.
But Peertube produces zero dollars for creators, which means they have no incentive to push users there. In fact, they’re incentivized to avoid doing so because there other platforms that will actually pay them if they can direct traffic there. Peertube lacks both the money-making side of things and the exposure side of things, so there’s no real reason to use it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see something independent like Peertube take off, but the model doesn’t really work.
baitu@jlai.lu 3 hours ago
But you can have metrics with subscriptions/likes/comments and you could get revenue through sponsorship. Also it would avoid censorship.
bufalo1973@piefed.social 8 hours ago
Because YouTube can shoot down you account and all your videos get blocked if they want?
Every political content creator should use PeerTube at least as a backup.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
They just use IG and TT as backups. Yeah, you could be banned from all three. But that’s where the audience is, so without that why bother?
I love the idea of fediverse video, but even I don’t use it. No content I care about. No audience that would care about me. I get more visibility on a Lemmy post that just says “beans” than I would spending an hour making a 30 second video.
bufalo1973@piefed.social 8 hours ago
No service starts as the winner. Each one has to work it’s way up (or down).
But I don’t say “don’t use YT”. Use it is you want (I do too). But, if you are a content creator, use PF as a backup. There are already some channels that do.
hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 hours ago
Most of them have Patreon for that, which actually produces income.
What’s the incentive? All they would be doing is pushing views away from platforms where having viewers actually benefits them, either through metrics or income or both.
bufalo1973@piefed.social 6 hours ago
Linux Weekly News already has a channel in YT and the same channel¹ in PT, with a sponsor (Tuxedo Computers).
¹ the same videos uploaded in both places.
neo2478@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
My main issue with peertube is that I find it confusing. Its not self contained in the sense on how to subscribe to channels or people. AFAIK you also need a mastodon account for it and to jump through some hoops to subscribe to a creator.
baitu@jlai.lu 3 hours ago
You don’t need a mastodon account, you can have a peertube account but finding an instance with open registration and that integrates sepia (the peertube fediverse search engine) isn’t straightforward. You can try peerate.fr
karashta@piefed.social 10 hours ago
I feel the same about PeerTube. And the fact it is a defederated network with opt in to federation is a bad model IMO. There’s no way for a creator to get paid, either AFAIK.
I tried it out. First sign up, I was shuttled to an instance federated with only two other instances. Second sign up, I found what looked like an active instance but there still is just a lack of content. I’m not sure how to fix any of its issues as I see them. I’d love an actual YouTube competitor
baitu@jlai.lu 3 hours ago
Yeah the entry’s ticket is a little high. It’s not easy to find an instance which has open registrations and integrates sepia (the federated search engine for peertube) but once you find one it works quite well! (I use peerate.fr)