I love the idea, but most servers only host a couple of videos, it’s very hard to find enjoyable content on there and it’s difficult to figure out which server could be a good server to make an account on…

I wouldn’t mind a centralized aggregator of videos and maybe it could have a suggestions algorithm as well or whatever. Not that this would be ideal in the long term but it could help get the videos some views and make more content creators see this as a good alternative. It’s not safe on youtube, people aren’t even saying suicide anymore ffs

Edit: Even some renowned german media have their own peertube servers that they feed with high quality videos, but of course they have basically 0 views. (https://peertube.heise.de/, https://tube.taz.de/)

  • Jarix@lemmy.world
    3·
    22 小时前

    No one has figured out how to make it seem like a centralized service, which is a much better experience for actually watching and finding content.

    All anyone needs to do is rewind 15 to 20 years ago, give people a content user experience to what you tube was then, and start packing it full of the content people already know.

    Creators won’t make money off of it though so it won’t gain traction.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    5·
    1 天前

    Because the very few people using it are more or less using it like personal video blogs, there’s nothing anyone other than their friends would want to watch.

    “Ackshually, there is good content!”
    Considering the ongoing complaint of peertube search sucking HARD, it’s as good as it not existing

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
    10·
    2 天前

    Since peertube isn’t backed by native torrents (only webtorrents which aren’t used by most torrenters), it means that individual servers are bearing an immense amount of hosting costs: hard drive space on VPS’s, network bandwidth, encoding, etc.

    This is a completely unsustainable model if you look at how much these things cost the people running them. 100GB alone of space on a VPS can cost more than $40 / month. and that’s just a handful of videos.

    Torrents have already solved this problem years ago, by distributing these costs among hundreds of seeders on their own personal computers. All that’s needed is for people to learn how to seed their own videos, and post magnet links around.

        • Salamander@mander.xyz
          3·
          1 天前

          Thanks. I don’t know much about torrenting other, and I never looked into the concept of what Magnet links are.

          It is actually very interesting! Such an elegant and simple solution.

          And I think it is even simpler than what the instructions imply… I can write the following into the terminal:

          transmission-cli "magnet:?xt=urn:btih:563cf8f2a0bdd5564ae9ef3d3302eecef639328b"

          And that’s enough to pull the first episode of alien earth that you shared. That unique hash is all it takes to search for seeders. Very cool.

          It is still not obvious to me who would seed when implementing the torrent-based YouTube alternative. Would it make sense that users set some torrenting ratio, a file lifetime, and a size limit, and ‘collect’ videos as they watch them so that they can seed for other users?

          All that’s needed is for people to learn how to seed their own videos, and post magnet links around.

          I’m in! Looking into it. Now I need to go make something worth sharing.

          • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
            3·
            23 小时前

            It always surprises me when ppl don’t know about torrents. They were the only way to get things before streaming services privatized all this content, and still remain better, by using the latest encodings and quality formats for media.

            It is still not obvious to me who would seed when implementing the torrent-based YouTube alternative.

            Torrenters generally leave their torrent application open in the background, and seed whatever and however they’d like. Some create rules around how much and how often to seed, either based on ratios, time seeded, or speed limits. Others just seed forever at max. All the modern clients like qbitorrent or deluge can handle this, pausing the torrents when they meet given rules.

            So new content would be no different than the thousands of people seeding existing content.

            • Salamander@mander.xyz
              3·
              22 小时前

              It always surprises me when ppl don’t know about torrents. They were the only way to get things before streaming services privatized all this content, and still remain better, by using the latest encodings and quality formats for media.

              I did know enough about torrents to do practically use them to download things since the Limewire/Ares times. But what I meant is that I never actually knew how they work at a technical level - I never opened a torrent file and looked inside, or knew what a magnet link was. So, then, the topic as a whole is still opaque to me. But I did some reading today and I’m getting into it.

              So new content would be no different than the thousands of people seeding existing content.

              I see it, but I also see why this concept might be intimidating to some. I (and probably many others) make use of torrents in rare occasion when I cannot find a movie, a series, or want an album. I associate torrenting with acquiring a large file for long term storage. Streaming feels different - videos exist in my computer only while I need them, and then they leave no trace. As I understand it, a torrent-based system would actually download all (or some) videos to disk to be able to seed them.

              Still, I do think that a youtube-like torrent-based client would be successful - especially if implemented in a way that is simple for the user. An interface to find content, transparent and adjustable torrent settings with control over disk space allocation, and the torrents/magnet link management mostly hidden from the user.

  • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
    212·
    2 天前

    Because of the friction for new users don’t understanding federation basis. Because of creators not having monetary revenue from advertiser on it. Beause of creators not having viewer on this service and thus cannot switch completely. Because people are lazy and YouTube works for most of them (until it become unusable)

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      1 天前

      It’s not that I “don’t understand federation basics”. It’s that PeerTube is absolutely, utterly devoid of content, and what less-than-bare-minimum content is there feels near-impossible to find. My standards for “enough content” aren’t YouTube’s lifetime worth of content uploaded every 12 hours; they’re “$30 annually for Nebula”.

      The one or two extant channels I may want to watch consistently are on YouTube, so I already have to either 1) have a better experience watching those on PeerTube or 2) sacrifice on principle to watch them there. It’s going to have to be (2), but unlike YouTube, I can’t just jump off over to PeerTube and search for those channels. Instead, they need to be federated with the instance I’m on, which is a total crapshoot in PeerTube.

      PeerTube’s niche audience doesn’t just make it subject to very little content; it also means the type of content is much more constrained. For example, those two-ish channels both center largely around digital privacy and FOSS. The content can pretty much be divided into: 1) random shit stolen from YouTube, 2) extremely amateurish videos, 3) person gives a rant about politics 4) actually decently produced videos but on a topic that’s at an extreme of (i) absurdly niche or (ii) generic enough to be found anywhere, and 5) (exceedingly rarely) real quality because the uploader is mirroring from their YouTube channel.

      PeerTube instances seem to often just go down out of nowhere. One time I registered to one to give PeerTube another chance, and I chose it after very carefully considering federation. I came back two months later, and what looked like a good, healthy instance had totally vanished. Instances are also hard to find, having random, messy names like “tube.ebin.club” or “diode.zone”.

      Comments are practically non-existent. YouTube is what happens when comments are too existent, but I appreciate being able to ignore bigger channels while going into the comments of small channels and seeing people meaningfully discussing the video.

      There seems to be almost zero curation for language, so plenty of videos I come across could just be in Finnish or whatever.

      PeerTube taken overall feels less like a place I’d want to sit down and stay for an hour a day and more like early YouTube where I’d want to watch a one-off video once a week. I searched for “vegan” for something generic and easy, and after a few of the 930 results, I found this video from a dead channel. Nothing crazy, but also something that’s not “clickbait title with one word in caps under a thumbnail where a red arrow points from white and red text to some image with no context”. It’s very cozy, but the channel has been dead for three years, so what’s there is what’s there.

    • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      2 天前

      Because of the friction for new users don’t understanding federation basis.

      This. Is. Not. Necessary. To. Use. The. Fediverse.

      I’m so tired of people repeating this endlessly

      • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 天前

        I agree, but it’s the reality I observe with my friends. I tell them it’s like e-mail it does not matter where you sign in you can access the whole federation from pretty much every instance. They still asks me if X or Z instance is great etc…

        • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          22 小时前

          They still asks me if X or Z instance is great etc…

          That sounds more like a case of analysis paralysis. Just point them to an instance you think will work for them and call it a day

    • limer@lemmy.ml
      6·
      2 天前

      I think most of the reasons can be classified as there is no incentive for content creators to post videos, other than ideological purity. And the creators of peertube absolutely will not use underhanded tactics to drive growth.

      That will sound inconsequential to most peertube fans, which is part of the problem.

      But there is a reason why YouTube is hard to compete against, and one does not win that using the high ground

  • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
    6·
    2 天前

    Take a look over at: https://piefed.social/f/fediversevideos if you want to see a collection of videos from a wide variety of instances.

    I like subscribing to channels via piefed OR on my home peertube server and use it like youtube subscriptions. I pick the best (or to me interesting) and post it over at !peertube@lemmy.world .

    https://peertube.fediverse.observer/dailystats&days=365

    Overall peertube is seeing a gradual increase in number of users and servers getting started up. Although its hard to tell with servers starting to implement anti AI and tracking software (makes it hard to find out numbers on certain trackers).

  • Catalyst@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 天前

    Peertube has been very difficult to setup and get going. Even just logging into the app. There’s a MUCH better option from FUTO called Grayjay. Grayjay is unreal. Check it out.

  • floofloof@lemmy.ca
    8·
    2 天前

    Yes, for the reasons you mention, plus the difficulty of learning what you’ll find where, and (I hate to say it) the absence of any financial motive for creators or hosts when there are commercial alternatives that will pay you. Because video production and hosting are both relatively expensive the financial side will be even more challenging than for Lemmy and Mastodon hosts.

    • sexy_peach@feddit.orgOP
      5·
      2 天前

      On yt you get 1$/1k views, that really isn’t a lot.

      Imo with more views the creators would earn the same money as on yt with sponsored segments.

  • ozoned@piefed.socialEnglish
    7·
    2 天前

    We’re going up against 20+ years of entrenched companies with billions of dollars. Most people don’t care, or there’s no money in it for them, or they don’t know, or they don’t understand.

    I’m trying personally, video.firesidefedi.live, and professionally, tubefree.org, but it’s difficult, expensive, and opens you up to a lot of potential problems.

    Just keep spreading word, being welcoming, find ways you can contribute whatever you can.

    We’ll get there. :-)

  • Sean Tilley@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    2 天前

    My pet theory is that PeerTube is slower on the uptake because of two primary reasons:

    1. YouTube Monetization
    2. Content Production

    Many YouTubers are comfortable staying right on YouTube, where they have the maximum impact, audience size, and money-making opportunities. For this group of people, moving off of YouTube just isn’t viable.

    Because of this, alternative video platforms have to rely on people who are willing to give PeerTube a shot. This is a combination of early adopters who are also on YouTube, people fed up with YouTube for whatever reason, and people in various social and political bubbles that would benefit from a more dedicated space for the things they care about.

    The other thing is, video production is time consuming compared to other social mediums. Microblogging by comparison has incredibly little friction, to the point that people can do it potentially dozens of times per day. Making a quality documentary, review, or soapbox piece? A single episode of that can take multiple weeks or longer.

    I actually think PeerTube is seeing some healthy growth, but discovering things I actually want to watch remains a challenge.

  • Jimbabwe@lemmy.world
    6·
    2 天前

    Peertube has never worked for me. Every time there’s a link on Lemmy, I follow it but get a generic error about the video not loading or being unavailable.

  • Vegafjord eo@lemmy.ml
    41·
    2 天前

    I think it has a lot to do with that we are trying to copy a model that only works for the mighty. Youtube depends on surveillance automatized algorithms. The surveillance is what makes their service work. This is not a type of algorithm we should copy from youtube. But that is what peertube has done. They rely on an algorithm that plays on surveillance. This means that the peertube experience is subpar.

    What we should do instead is rely on algorithms that rely on people actively pointing out to likeminded videos. To let people be the algorithm just like how people were the algorithm of the early web. Perhaps that we associate our channel with other likeminded channels. Or that we actively point people towards the videos we think are relevant to the current video.

    • sexy_peach@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      4·
      2 天前

      But that is what peertube has done. They rely on an algorithm that plays on surveillance.

      how so?

  • psycotica0@lemmy.ca
    3·
    2 天前

    I made some videos about a trip to Japan I took once, and I uploaded them to YouTube but because I’m an Open Source person I also tried to upload to PeerTube since they’re all CC media. I think the one that was 20 minutes long failed to upload, so I didn’t even try with my hour long ones.

    I just decided it wasn’t ready.

    As much as YouTube isn’t the friendliest company, I have to give them props at a technical level. I think a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to support something with so many huge files, at different levels of resolution, loading in a second, etc etc.

    The only technical problems I have with YouTube are the things they intentionally are doing to try and mess with people.