Is PeerTube dead or is discoverability bad?

Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨farcaster@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

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: tilvids.com/search?categoryOneOf=7

Is discoverability on PeerTube bad, or are there barely any active channels?

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haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨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 !peertube@lemmy.ml for example. The devs should be available through the fedi somewhere.

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- meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  You should go here ideas.joinpeertube.org or here github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube to raise concerns.
  
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  - haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Thank you very much! I love the cooperation in the fedi.
    
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- AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Is there a non ml community? I try to avoid the “genocide is ok when China does it” instances
  
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  - haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yes someone suggested !peertube@lemmy.wtf and world seems to have one as well.
    
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- commander@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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.
  
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commander@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.

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- TeddE@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Seems difficult to build it as a social media if it’s inherently unsocial.
  
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  - Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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)
    
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  - Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨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.
    
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- CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  That seems… like a poor choice.
  
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  - derpgon@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    We use it in our company because we don’t want to upload videos only we use to Google.
    
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- meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yes and no.
  
  By default anyone can follow your instance.
  
  If you want your instance to follow others, you either have to type them in manually or use “auto-follow”, which needs to be enabled manually.
  
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Jerry@feddit.online ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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.

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- Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I see two possible ways for it to succeed:
    
    Federate by default, defederate if you have to. This is how Lemmy mostly seems to work; I proposed a policy for defederation for sh.itjust.works that has been used, we will federate with you unless you start spamming or hosting illegal porn or spewing hate speech or that kind of shit, then we’ll defederate. That has to happen at the instance level; if example.lol is generally fine but there’s one account there that’s a nuisance that’s what the block button is for, but lolita.rape gets defederated (and reported to the FBI).
    
    Apply and join model. Have a coalition of instances that agree to mutually uphold certain moderation practices (no hate speech, no kid fucking, goat or human, no human trafficking, etc) and then they federate with each other, eventually forming a large and wholesome community.
    
    Nobody federates and it’s a bunch of independent nothings won’t work. Youtubers will use it as a backup service, a couple of the real paranoid Linux types will host their videos there that someone might even watch, and half the instances will be places you go when you’ve been kicked off of Youtube.
    
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  - Jerry@feddit.online ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yes!
    
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- Die4Ever@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  what’s the best peertube instance to upload gaming videos to? I might upload some and see how it goes
  
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  - captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Would that mean you need an account name to be Die4Ever and your channel identifier might be Die4Ever_Games?
    
    That would actually solve a problem I had on Youtube, where, I’ll use Linus Media Group as an example, Tech Linked and Mac Address were different unrelated Youtube channels. Youtube has no concept of “Shows”
    
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  - meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Take a look here: lemmy.wtf/post/15816115
    
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  - meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Isn’t it the exact same thing on YouTube?
    
    You have a user account, which can have x numbers of channels.
    
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  - e0qdk@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    As someone who watches gaming footage on PeerTube, I’ve mostly interacted with single creator instances – i.e. either the creator themselves is self-hosting it or it’s run by a fan as a non-YT backup of their Twitch/Owncast/whatever VODs. Those instances generally do not allow anyone else to upload.
    
    Discoverability sucks but the way I’ve found them is by using SepiaSearch and looking for specific words from game titles. I imagine the way most other people find them is that they already know the content creator from Twitch and want to find an old VOD that isn’t archived on YT (e.g. because of YT’s bullshit copyright system) – but that’s just a guess.
    
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  - roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Haha, good luck.
    
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- meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Tilvids.com don’t want to allow following or follow anyone themselves. That’s a policy they have had for a long time. However… Since Tilvids is on this list: instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?search=tilvi…, they are part of the Global Search Index. So you can get videos from tilvids in your search results, if you instance has enabled Global Search.
  
  Also, you, as an instance owner, can follow channels on tilvids, by using their channel handles.
  
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- Madiator2011@lm.madiator.cloud ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Fell free to send federation request :) peer.madiator.cloud
  
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Intergalactic@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Just horrible discovery leading creators to abandon the platform.

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- farcaster@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - prof_wafflez@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yeah that’s been my experience with most of the fediverse so far. It’s not going anywhere unless someone comes up with a solution to the discoverabilty problems.
    
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  - KingJalopy@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I had the exact same experience including the videos you linked to. There was nothing to be found.
    
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- roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Which is silly because most instances will auto mirror your YouTube channel. Literally takes no effort to post to both.
  
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rocky1138@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s really just missing a great instance. Most of them look really shady or are not accepting new users.

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- commander@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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.
  
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  - captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Do we need to start over? Like fork PeerTube and fix all the “We choose to do this wrong because our parents didn’t hug us as children” problems?
    
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  - meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Check out the pinned posts here: !peertube@lemmy.wtf for info on instances that fits your needs.
    
    You can mouse over the blurred title and see what it is.
    
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- SuperSleuth@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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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- meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Check the out the pinned post here about instances: !peertube@lemmy.wtf
  
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Madiator2011@lm.madiator.cloud ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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.

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meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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: peertube.wtf/home and this one 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: lemmy.wtf/post/15816115

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- Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    That’s my instance! :D
    
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- Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  Simply copy the link from tilvids.com
  
  …what link?
  
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  - meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The link of the channel or the channel handle.
    
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- mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Veronica explains is one channel I always enjoys (if you like Linux).
  
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  - yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    She is on her own instance now
    
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jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Its growing like crazy. Try the app they just released. It uses some search that works better than instance search

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- Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  It uses sepia search to search all instances that have opted into being searched.
  
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mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I created !peertube@lemmy.world in case anyone finds channels, videos, ect that they like. Maybe we can help with the discovery!

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- meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Check out the pinned posts here: !peertube@lemmy.wtf
  
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  - mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    !peertube@lemmy.wtf
    
    Thanks, I tried to add as much as I could from that community.
    
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roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨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.

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- Die4Ever@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  they seem to only give accounts to creators
  
  Yea this is a bit silly. It seems like they manually approve user accounts because they need to be careful with the uploads using up their storage. But a way better solution would be to approve users more liberally, and user accounts would be created without a channel so they cannot upload anything, and creating channels needs to be approved. That way people can freely make user accounts for browsing/following, and the admins can still restrict spam channels from being created and uploading videos.
  
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  - roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Exactly. The way it is structured seems to forget people who watch the videos are an important part of the community.
    
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  - andrew_s@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    they seem to only give accounts to creators
    
    That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. I'll get in trouble for saying it, but I think that PeerTube is for video channels what Lemmy should be for communities. It should be that if you want to start or moderate a community, then you sign up to Lemmy, but if you just want to interact with one, you use a user account provided by software that's fully geared up around users (e.g. Mastodon).
    
    Ignoring for the moment that Lemmy's federation model hasn't been widely adopted, and that comments from Mastodon that appear in Lemmy often have annoying Hashtag / Mention spam, my fantasy version of a post in a Lemmy community would look something like https://tilvids.com/w/wjTD7fp9qy4KmTkBdSoWyc, which was created by a PeerTube user, but has been commented on and voted for by users from Mastodon, Sharkey, PieFed, other PeerTube instances, and MBIN.
    
    Amongst those subscribers, commenters, and voters should be Lemmy users, of course. In this thread, it feels like PeerTube is being criticised by people who want to use it in a way that it's not designed for, because they can't interact with it from their Lemmy account. If inter-op was better, there'd be no need to create a new account anywhere, and it would have a network effect - the channels that people are trying to discover would already have been brought in by other users, and findable through a conventional Lemmy search. Also, the votes and comments from Lemmy users that are currently going to whoever takes a PeerTube video and posts it in the likes of !videos@lemmy.world, would instead be going to original creator. This would also aid discovery (since people would be more likely to see the channel in 'all'), and might have also some incentivising influence on the creator.
    
    Basically, I blame Lemmy.
    
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- haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨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.
  
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  - roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The that’s a shit solution.
    
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  - mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Some Lemmy instances work. Others don’t. Piefed and kbin/kbin work well though.
    
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- meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Which instance was that? Have a look at this list: lemmy.wtf/post/15816115
  
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  - roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    That’s a shit solution
    
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meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Check out the two pinned posts here: !peertube@lemmy.wtf

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- y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I just checked that out and am Fry ng to make a decision but am confused about storage space for users. What do people use peertube storage space for and/or why might I want it?
  
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  - meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Storage is for videos you upload. If you don’t intend to upload video, you should just go for a PeerTube platform (instance/server) that federates with as many other as possible.
    
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muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I think peer tube federation is opt in not opt out like most other services.

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- meldrik@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  The PeerTube admin chooses which other platforms they follow. They can also control who can follow them.
  
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mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yeah the search is the worst part. As others have said the technology is there, we just need a better search.

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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- rimu@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Nice channel, I've just added it to https://piefed.social/topic/wholesome to help people find it.
  
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  - mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Excellent. I hope we will all enjoy it.
    
    I’ll work on a logo and other stuff
    
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Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Try the app, it’s a little better

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- roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Not if you want to subscribe to a channel, or interact with videos in any way.
  
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  - Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yeah it is a major work in progress but discoverability is better and you can use Sepia search from within it.
    
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JoYo@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
i can’t easily upload from my ipad which is my main video creation device.

i just post to my personal goto social instance without issue.

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Is PeerTube dead or is discoverability bad?

Comments

Platforms can also follow channels directly from tilvids and the videos will show up on said platform.