this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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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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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

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: https://peertube.wtf/home and this one https://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: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Oh :D

Well, you are doing a great job, and I like what I have seen so far! Keep up the good work!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Excellent instance!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Simply copy the link from tilvids.com

...what link?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

The link of the channel or the channel handle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Veronica explains is one channel I always enjoys (if you like Linux).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

She is on her own instance now

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 days ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago (4 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (9 children)

what's the best peertube instance to upload gaming videos to? I might upload some and see how it goes

edit: I think I'm gonna go with spectra, but omg this is annoying:

Channel identifier cannot be the same as your account name. You can click on the first step to update your account name.

I get it, they're separate actors, but still annoying. Can people find my channel by either name? Edit2: yes they can, all the user's channels are listed on the user profile, which maybe makes it worth the signup annoyance

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Just horrible discovery leading creators to abandon the platform.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Honestly if they could make the mastodon sign up not give people options initially I think it is effectively a better twitter.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I created [email protected] in case anyone finds channels, videos, ect that they like.

We can help with the discovery!

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (15 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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 [email protected], 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Basically, I blame Lemmy.

Peertube is older than Lemmy though.

What you suggest isn't actually a bad idea, but if that was the goal then they shouldn't even pretend to support user accounts only channel accounts, channel accounts wouldn't need to be able to like/comment/subscribe either. They wouldn't have to bother with their UI rendering likes/dislikes/comments, they wouldn't need buttons to subscribe, and they wouldn't need a mobile app either. It's a good idea, just be a video backend and only support the embedded video player (as it appears on Mastodon), but it doesn't seem like that was their goal.

They support everything, they just don't encourage it? A logged in user doesn't use much more server resources than an anonymous user. It's still fetching all the video stats and comments, and of course the video itself which is the biggest thing. Kinda seems like it's just for moderation concerns.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I think they still need a separate user account. For one thing, a PeerTube channel is 'attributedTo' the user account, in the same way that Lemmy communities are 'attributedTo' the moderators. A Group belongs to at least one Person, it can't belong to itself. Another is that it allows for creators to comment on videos, and either be recognised as the 'OP', or as a fellow content creator.

In terms of rendering things like Likes and Dislikes, it has the info in the backend, so it may as well. They don't Announce votes like Lemmy does, you have to activitely fetch them, so the channel as it exists on PeerTube provides a definitive source. Likewise, there's all sorts of reasons why comments get out of sync, so the channel provides an authoritative place where you should be able to see them all.

There is a friction though. I like the idea of a place that only open to people willing to create content, and isn't interested in signups from 'lurkers', but providing a mobile app doesn't seem compatible with that.

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