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?

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Video hosting being expensive is why it’s difficult for an individual to make an account on most if any instances, which is also a problem.

    There are two “that kind of behaviors” here; the button to make content searchable across peertube is off by default for some reason and some admins aren’t clicking it. That could be for myriad reasons. TILvids trying to build a walled garden in an open platform is just outright wrongheadedness.

    I like the idea of themed instances that revolve around certain broad topics, kind of the way television channels used to do. Some of us are old enough to remember when there was science fiction on the Sci-Fi channel, music videos on MTV, documentaries on the Discovery Channel and so on. TILvids is trying to be the Discovery channel, except anyone who signs up for cable TV primarily for the Discovery channel doesn’t get to see other channels, and anyone who signed up mostly for something else doesn’t get to see the Discovery channel. The owner has talked about a “hub and spoke” model they want to build with TILvids as the hub, which is an incompatible vision with the success of PeerTube as a whole.

    I’ll also mention that I’ve never seen the “upload” gauge on Peertube do anything. The idea is it works like bittorrent, those who are watching a video will seed it to others to help share the load. I’ve yet to see that actually happen, and I wonder if it’s because no one else in the world was watching that video at that moment.

    I don’t know much about Loops; it may be too early to ask. I haven’t really looked at it yet, in no small part because you have to sign up for it, you can’t really window shop. I think Loops is going to face the same problem that Minetest (or whatever they changed its name to) does; it’s a good piece of software that does the things you like, and it’s not attached to the corporate fuckheads who burned your future down. Want to try it out? “Absolutely, 100% no I don’t because it’s not the program my friends have.” The fact that the Tiktok ban in America turned out to be fake is probably what’s going to fail to launch Loops.

    • Meldrik@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      P2P on videos does work and if you watch out for a live stream, you’ll probably see it yourself.

      Yesterday I was watching a live stream, where I had 10 peers.