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?
I was looking to see what ‘peer tube’ was in the post but it wasn’t explained. This one is for the savvy insiders who are hip to the scene.
Completely fair, I made this post assuming that ‘anyone on fediverse social forums obviously knows what PeerTube is,’ thanks for pointing out the flaw in my unconscious biases, I’ll keep it in mind if I make more posts like this.
Essentially, PeerTube is to YouTube what Lemmy is to Reddit, a network of video streaming websites where the content of each website is, in theory, accessible through other instances in the network. I made this post in an effort to identify common reasons people who try PeerTube can’t stick around.
Hey, thanks for the explanation! All the best.
no content, can’t make account. Its like the instances dont even want users. Tried 2, first didnt even send confirmation message and never heard from second. Both probably wanted me to write an essay about why i want to use peertube.
I had some content of my own that i would have liked to upload, as i would much rather have it be there than in youtube. But it seems it isnt wanted.
deleted by creator
Ubiquity. YouTube may not have a monopoly in the strictest definition, but it might as well in practice. Honestly, YouTubes competition is not similar platforms, but Online Streaming services. Nebula comes to mind, though I think there’s a couple of others where it’s creator driven. (As opposed to Television streaming services/cable)
Not sure how it’s working right now, but it’s the combination of having your IP exposed and lack of moderation. Like constantly being on a bittorrent public tracker, right? It’s fine, but not great.
Next to the lack of content argument, I simply don’t get how it works. It’s federated, but feels much different from lemmy or Mastodon. I would say the instance feel ‘less connected’ as there is no good way to explore instances, at least in my experience. You can’t make an account and when you can it’s only valid for that one instance. Content exploration is a nightmare and a lot of content is in french, which I’m not great at. The (iOS) app is hardst working and the website(s) are confusing. I tried peertube for a while but i was mostly stuck on one instance with only one or two channels that made content that I found remotely interesting… I am really hoping it takes off at some point, but I think a lot of development still has to be done to make it usable for the casual user
In an immediate sense for me, the content I want to see. I’ve found virtually nothing on PeerTube that’s worth my time watching, whereas YouTube has all sorts of interesting stuff.
But that really just leads to a deeper question of why that content isn’t there.
Google’s got the economics set up so that they can pay content creators. PeerTube doesn’t. That means that people who want to do this for a living are going to be on YouTube.
Not all of the content I want to see falls into that camp, but certainly some of it does.
Then there’s network effect, which benefits an incumbent. PeerTube has a limited userbase. Even for people who are putting up content without intention of making money, they probably want to reach a large number of users relative to the effort they put in.
I think that the big factor is going to be the economic side. Google’s got a setup where they can make money for their own infrastructure and pay content creators. PeerTube doesn’t, and I don’t really see a way that that changes.
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.
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
While I agree with the lack of content that I’m interested in, when it comes to searching, the Web search engines that index video can find it. Kagi Video specifically has “PeerTube” as a source, so you can search just PeerTube.
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.
lack of videos
videos ain’t that the truth
Content is lacking. I don’t like the UI. Fewer features, and non-responsive admins.
Basically it just isn’t up to snuff.
There are genuine reasons to not like PeerTube, like the lack of monetisation, lacking types of content (Like you mentioned), incompatibilities between instances due to not catching up to new PeerTube versions, hard power-hungy federation, etc…
But what missing features are there though? I can maybe think of lack automatic subtitling in many instances. Your point about non-responsive admins is weird though, I’m actually not experienced, but the 2 instances I’ve used (TILVids and ExquisiteTube) have highly responsive admins, which instances have you tried?
I’m genuinely curious to hear your other difficulties (If you can) because I myself don’t know what is to be expected by regular users
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.
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.
There’s no content because there would be no reason to put your content on it even if it had the users.
Being ad-free is great for the viewers, but it’s problematic for creators. Creators who already have something working for them on YouTube need to completely change their model if they now need to rely solely on donation/patreon. That’s especially hard for smaller channels who are still building viewership.
The long and short of it is, it’s just harder to make content if you can’t at least get some ad revenue going.
As a result, this is not a chicken and egg thing. It is not “there’s no content, because there’s no audience, because there’s no content”.
Instead it’s “there’s no audience, because there’s no content, because there’s no ad revenue”. And now we have a real conceptual problem with the platform.
yeah it’s a “if it’s free, you’re the product” thing but with nobody actually selling.
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.
The majority of YouTube content has never produced a dime for the creators.
well yeah, if there’s no pay there’s no way to sustainably produce for the platform.
Direct people to Kofi, Liberapay, and Patreon, and have Peertube for outreach like on Youtube
you need an audience first. the conversion rate is usually about 1%.
Peertube is Youtube 20 years ago.
Cool but lacks of content and creators
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 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
