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?
No one i watch is on there
Peertube lacks in discoveribility.
The PeerTube app is better than the website, but lacks in many.
Provided filters are basic, either I see hot videos, which don’t update for a long while, so I’m stuck with the same selection.
Or new filter gives me the newest videos, which are from spammy channels, that upload multiple videos in a short span, which isn’t helpful, there is no filter that mixes between the two, there’s no algorithm that surfaces interesting videos.
interests tag might be good but something a bit dynamic and detail is what I wish.
the website is very confusing. How do I see videos from all instances like in the app. And why interests reset everytime when pressing a button to sort?
Personally I find it lacking content. If it had more content I would use it exclusively. I already dropped twitter when gnu social and then dropped reffit when Lemmy started.
As a user it lacks high-quality content and/or discoverability. As a content creator it lacks free storage, monetization and viewers.
When I found https://search.peertube.watch/hot.html I thought this might be a game changer, but sadly it didn’t do much for me as my interests are elsewhere (YouTube subs: Taskmaster and other game shows, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and other video games, Boxing/MMA/Fitness, TTRPGs)
Hey, I just created an account because I am the person running https://search.peertube.watch/ :)
A few thoughts:
I think you are mostly right about the lack of content. The limited selection you see on the hot page is basically all that’s released from the top 30% of all peertube channels (the one’s that federate with me, anyway). I could include more in the index (and probably will, just to get some more breadth) but for now, the content is going to remain thin. I am also a little careful about indexing because the third problem PeerTube has is the large amount of low quality content. YouTube has this as well, but they have sophisticated algorithms to keep the sludge hidden from you.
I also run the main instance https://peertube.watch/ as kind of an experiment how better discoverability would help the browsability of PeerTube. For example, I only federate with the top 30% of fediverse channels (keep the quality up), then do automatic language detection and some light recommender systems work to give sensible video recommendations. Default PeerTube’s video recommendations are all over the place. I know people are skeptical of any type of recommendation algorithm, I feel like as long as it’s not personalized it should be ok. Also, if you dislike how a specific instance does its recommendations, a user could always just go to a different instance.
For example, https://peertube.watch/w/s9v7ZS8axHDRhXfnY5LyKt shows recommendations for similar linux-related videos. I believe that my recommendations are pretty much the best currently available and I am still unsatisfied with the discoverability.
Hey, thanks for the thorough reply. TL;DR: I largely agree.
The limited selection you see on the hot page is basically all that’s released from the top 30% of all peertube channels (the one’s that federate with me, anyway). I know people are skeptical of any type of recommendation algorithm, I feel like as long as it’s not personalized it should be ok.
In my opinion giving the user the freedom to select how posts are sorted is key. Lemmy for example offers many options: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/03-votes-and-ranking.html#sorting-posts I for one would dislike a system where only the largest 30% of all peertube channels are recommended. I would prefer a system where the newest, most reacted to (relation to other posts of that user) are recommended. But this will differ on a user basis.
Just the largest 30% makes it impossible to discover cool new channels.
I am also not against recommendation. I am even fine with personalized recommendations as long as it is optional.
I will definitely take a look at your instance!
Confession time: I only use it to upload videos so I can then post them on Lemmy.
Mostly because everyone I watch videos from is on YouTube…
But even YouTube can’t show me anything new or different out there with the home page containing 3 or 4 topics I clicked on once, like 15 copies of the same content from different people, and videos I just watched.
I would kill for an overall view of what’s uploaded like it used to be, but even then it would just be full of garbage.
Mainly content. I’ve basically stopped using YouTube now since I route all of my device traffic over Tor and using YouTube with Tor is a pain in the ass. I’m able to find a decent amount of the creators that I used to watch on YouTube on a combination of Rumble and odysee, but very little on PeerTube.
Two YouTube channels I had to unsubscribe from when I left YouTube were channels talking about the United States cellular networks such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, and there is not a creator on any of the other platforms discussing that content.
I’ve just activated PeerTube in my GrayJay app. I’ll give it a shot. So far it has just brought up Linux and coding videos as far as I can see. Not promising to be honest.
My videos don’t encode properly and then no one sees it.
Tried mp4, mov, avi
Then 264 or 265 or av1
None worked
