PeerTube is fantastic with its decentralized model that prioritizes user privacy and control. However, it still struggles to gain widespread popularity.
What do you think could be done to enhance PeerTube’s appeal and functionality, possibly even becoming a serious alternative to YouTube?
There are currently two main reasons I don’t use PeerTube:
- Videos have inconsistent playback performance.
- It’s pretty confusing and difficult to use if you are just looking for an experience similar to YouTube.
If they can find a way to make playback performance consistent and make the entire experience better, then I’d consider using it. But, I already use YouTube alternatives like Odysee and Rumble, so I don’t know how much I’d end up actually using PeerTube.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but since a lot of creators rely on youtube’s monetization, it might be necessary for peertube to impement some form of monetization too.
Yeah, if you have that you can get parallel uploads and streams. Also you get tutorials and pretty much all content.
Along with the other things posted here, it would be nice if peertube had a landing page or even if there was a “watch peertube now” button that led to a page showcasing current popular videos or something.
I clicked your link to peertube.org, then had to “Ask Sepia, our iconic cuttlefish” for a search term to get a list of videos, which after scrolling for a bit moved into lists and channels. A click of the “show more videos” button opened a new tab, and upon clicking a video to watch yet another tab opened to what seems like a fediverse instance for peertube?
For it to be a viable alternative, it needs to capture the way people watch and engage with youtube. If I am watching a video on youtube, there are suggestions for similar content below. If I go to the home page and scroll, either the most popular content will show if I am not signed in, or if I am, content related to videos I watch will be shown.
If I click to watch a video, it will open in the same window.
This is the sort of usability that will entice those new users to make the leap.
Content. I’m there for the content, not the platform.
Who is on PeerTube that we should be watching?
How often are watch-worthy videos on PeerTube posted on Lemmy?
I’ve seen one or two interesting videos posted to Lemmy from PeerTube in the ~6 months I’ve been here. I think both were from someone called Linux Mom or something like that and I’m not sure but it looked like they weren’t posted by her but by someone else uploading her videos from YouTube to the service. One video was her showing how to use a device to backup old game cartridges and the other was a video for Linux beginners.
That’s about all I’ve seen that grabbed my attention, and the second was only because I liked the creator from the first. But again, I don’t know if it was an official upload that she supported, and if it wasn’t that’s not a good way to attract creators.
There’s a webpage for that https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/ Top 5 are:
- Share channel administration between several users (103 votes)
- “Audio only” video quality (91 votes)
- Mobile phone client (91 votes)
- Allow third parties to contribute bandwidth (89 votes)
- Support multilingual videos (67 votes)
Feel free to vote or add more ideas.
i think all the issues can be surmounted if they find a way to pay creators like youtube does.
A lot of niche YouTubers say that they get most of their revenue from patreon and other sites like that so it seems like there’s already existing avenues to post videos and get paid via a different site
Yeah, it’s not about monetization. I think for content creators the biggest limiting factor is the user base. If you make a video but nobody sees it then what’s the point of making a video? You want people watching your creations and the more users a site has the more likely you’re going to have people watching your video. So a real suggestion would be something like video visibility which is kind of a hit or miss on Youtube since the magical Youtube algorithm pretty much throws only clickbait.
We need to make it more profitable to post on peertube than to post on yt.
That’s probably impossible, since there are no ads on PeerTube. There’s nothing keeping content creators from using YouTube AND PeerTube though.
Yes, do both platforms, and also we’ve already figured out that the patron model works. If enough people like something, some will pay to support the creator.
That fact doesn’t grow peertube right now, but I think it means we don’t actually need to monetise peertube directly.
That would mean that some walk away from YouTube. Thus shrinking the ad revenue.
It’s a problem.
I think if we do a crypto based pay per gb for generalised data delivery we could do it.
Adding crypto is just adding another layer of complexity imho.
An integration with Liberapay would be in the right direction, I think.
Content, monetization, and ubiquity.
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Content: PT skews heavily into Linux and Linux adjacent topics. And that’s fine, but when I say I watch more YT than regular TV, I’m not kidding. And its because of the diversity and variety of channels. Things like History Hit or Every Frame a Painting, and silly shit like Red Letter Media. YouTube isn’t just “let’s plays” and game streaming. So Peertube can’t be “Just Linux”
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Monetization: Creators have to get paid. That’s just reality. It would be a fine world if everyone could spend hours doing their passion for free and not have to worry about deeding themselves. If you want #1, you need a certain amount if full time creators, and for that they need to get paid.
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Ubiquity: Watching more YouTube than regular TV, I don’t want to sit in front of my computer to do it. We need to be able to access it from smart TVs, ROKU sticks, etc… And not just a port of the website that requires a mouse and keyboard, but something optimized to work with smart TV remote controls.
The issue with the Fediverse (not that I don’t love the fediverse, I do) is that all of those three things require large scale framework and organisational planning; which is the antithesis to what the Fediverse is all about.
Tl;Dr – Large scale success of PeerTube as a thing is largely impossible without abandoning the concept of federation itself.
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Lots of great content. (And maybe exclusive content so people have to go there.) I think concerning functionality, it’s pretty alright as is.
Money for creators
What I’m about to say is probably dumb but… I think it wouldn’t be really possible for PeerTube to become a serious alternative to YouTube, because of decentralization.
Like, sure, that may be a good thing in certain cases - we’re literally on Lemmy - but I want to be able to access content from most PeerTube instances using one singular instance, which isn’t really possible with PeerTube. As a result, the majority of instances feel dead.
I think what we need is an open-source and centralized alternative to YouTube (if that doesn’t already exist), but I might be missing something.
Isn’t the entire point of federation to be able to do what you’re describing?
