I'm not going to bother uploading my videos to #PeerTube any more. The work I have to put into that is not worth the optimistic 1.6% of views I get from YouTube.
Almost NOBODY uses it. And even I can't find my own stuff there without a link.
Sadly PeerTube as a platform is a non-alternative to YouTube. The tech is neat, the P2P aspect is great, but it only works as a backup video hosting for me.
If you do care about it - get in touch with me and offer help.
Thanks for your understanding :)
One thing I would like to see in a peertube UX is the ability to hop from instance to instance for users to help acclimatize them to the idea of multiple nodes. Plus it saves having to copy and paste.
I also feel like if there was a comprehensive search engine I can search through a collection of instances at once would help a bit. currently, discoverablity is limited by those instances sync to, and it's unreasonable to sync with everyone.
I also want to add is that, that like @lashman mentioned, the majority of videos on the instances are largely french.
My bigger issue with #peertube instances though is a lack of focus, or game plan really. Barring notable exceptions likes sharetube, vidcommons, and blender's instance, most of the instances seem to sync be almost random in there purpose, and/or community behind it. There's not really an content, tone, or community based instance.
@MacroDeSatire @davidpgil @unfa also this, yes
basically - if you don't already have a link to a video you want to watch - there's VERY little chance you're gonna find anything interesting just by browsing ... "recently added" list seems to be instance-based ... and "trending" seems to ALWAYS have the same exact videos (most of which are months old)
the fact that both of those lists are limited to 25 videos each doesn't help either
it's like walking into a library that only has 3 old books
I just checked out a few instances and recently added does seem to be instances across synced networks.
Though the same videos trending across the majority of the instances that are up to month old still stands. And that's kind of frustrating to a point. Because there's a lot of potential in peertube being this decentralized hub of creators, and hobbyists pooling resources. Catering to content not trending on youtube. Though, I also understand that it's a big gamble.
@MacroDeSatire @davidpgil @unfa yeah, i agree ... there just has to be a way to "rotate" videos ... because even if there are thousands of videos accessible through search but i go to "trending" and it's always the same exact list of videos (more or less) - then the regular person will just think there are ONLY around 30 videos on peertube combined ... which is not a great look
there has to be a way to do SOMETHING about this ... categories? random recommendations? i don't know
My personal approach would be a decay of what is "trending" by how long a video has been up for. New videos getting a stronger presence on the viewing instance.
Though looking at the documentation there doesn't seem to be a way yet. I sort of was hoping there would be some implementation since there are multiple cache redundancy strategies, so I wonder if trending priority can work similar.
https://docs.joinpeertube.org/#/contribute-architecture?id=redundancy-between-instances
@MacroDeSatire @davidpgil @unfa well that would DEFINITELY be a step in the right direction
also - maybe don't limit both lists to only 25 videos because that combined with trending pretty much never changing, and recent uploads being sooooo slow (as in - barely anyone uploads) it pretty much means the VAST majority of videos are completely invisible until you try searching for something ... which is not exactly ideal
@MacroDeSatire @davidpgil @unfa also - i just went to share.tube (seems to be one of the "bigger" English ones ... unless i'm missing something?) and tried to search for some common stuff ... NONE of those searches gave me more than 5-8 results ... so either i'm doing something wrong or there really is BARELY anything on there (and i'm assuming search results include federated stuff as well, which makes it even worse)
I'm not sure about bigger, but it is one of the more well known ones. It would seem that Share tube seems to not follow as many other instances. Though now that 1.4 one can show a list of instances they follow, that might be easier to confirm the near future.
Also I'm unsure what you mean by listing only 25 videos per list? Most I've have infinite scrolling. Though the lack of userbase that barely uploads still doesn't help regardless.
@MacroDeSatire @davidpgil @unfa i can only see 25 on both lists (and i'm not blocking any scripts either) ... weird
@davidpgil @unfa not to mention the fact that, like, 90% of anything peertube-related on the internet is in French (including the nodes and videos themselves)