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I love #PeerTube as a project, and have been running an instance basically forever, but my experience on finding stuff to watch is almost as difficult as it is to find people who want to be part of my instance.

Make no mistake: I can basically afford to run my instance for years to come, and plan to keep it on for some time. But, I feel as though my attempt to make a little community for video creators just isn't really progressing in any way. It feels really frustrating.

Making videos is fun, but it also feels like a lot of effort for very little payoff in my case. Every now and then, I make a new effort, but it just feels like I'm politely speaking into the void.

Maybe I'm just bad at this.
#PeerTube
Unknown parent

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
• •
yeah, it's hard to get people to switch off of places like YouTube, which remains a massive hub of millions of hours of monetized content.
in reply to Sean Tilley

Lien Rag
Lien Rag
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You know Sepia Search ?
in reply to Lien Rag

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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I do, I wrote a big article about the content situation on PeerTube a while back, and SepiaSearch was something I touched on.

Sepia is...not very good for discovery.

https://deadsuperhero.com/peertube-content-wasteland/

PeerTube's Content Wasteland

In 2018, a platform was launched to build an open, decentralized web for videos. In 2021, the network is still struggling to grow.
Sean Tilley (DEAD SUPERHERO)
Unknown parent

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
• •
Maybe. As an admin, you kind of have to make an effort to follow a bunch of other places first, just to ensure that you and other people on your instance have something to watch.

My instance follows 40 others, and it still feels like a slow trickle sometimes.
in reply to Sean Tilley

Tio
Tio
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Yah almost no one will use peertube. Same story with the fediverse itself. Very very few compared to the big online giants. I think one cool idea would be to have an invidious plugin for peertube so it can showcase and display youtube videos in your peertube. This way will at least incentivize people to use peertube and maybe getting familiar with it may make some use it for their own personal videos. So in a way to merge youtube with peertube via invidious or something similar.

mousebot reshared this.

in reply to Tio

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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Kinda reminds me of the Twitter and Facebook bridges that Friendica used to have. Not a bad concept by any means, could actually make for a pretty cool plugin.
in reply to Sean Tilley

オツユグ🇵🇸
オツユグ🇵🇸
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I love the peertube's idea too. As a user thought, using old computers most of the time and having an unstable connexion, peertube is problematic. I very often need to stop watching from peertube and look for the equivalent on youtube because I'm stuck loading a video. Even when I need to extract it, I can usually find more appropriate lightweight format from some heavyweight website than the equivalent peertube video.

To that point selfhosted htlm5 directdownload video felt better. :(
in reply to オツユグ🇵🇸

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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On the bright side, this is somewhat improved when instances use ObjectStorage to host their videos. A decent amount of instances support this now, so a lot of videos load better than they used to.
in reply to Sean Tilley

オツユグ🇵🇸
オツユグ🇵🇸
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I mean there is the bandwith issue, there is also the optimisation of the videoreader, my computer fan goes out of control and I can't do anything else.

And the videos format available... When you get like me with 100 to less ko/s you can't just go for most peertube video without screaming in pain most of the time because the only option is 720p and can get extra-heavy (sometimes >1Go for <1h videos)

So yeah, I wish I used peertube most of the time. In practicality, I can't :s
in reply to オツユグ🇵🇸

オツユグ🇵🇸
オツユグ🇵🇸
• •
But it wasn't the issue you were pointing out, sorry for the unrelated enduser-rant. You were talking about the creator's community.
in reply to オツユグ🇵🇸

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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That's okay, you pointed out an important issue, too.

Maybe I'll look into adding some lower resolution options for my instance, just keeping the problem you described in mind. 🙂
in reply to Sean Tilley

Boiling Steam
Boiling Steam
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Peertube as a video distribution platform is fine, now we need the equivalent of proper decentralized search/recommendation for such decentralized content. That's the whole benefit of centralized platforms and as long as we don't crack that problem there is virtually no adoption to be had.
in reply to Boiling Steam

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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Yeah, I actually feel like a simple, optional recommendation algorithm could actually be a good thing for discovery.

Maybe that could start off as a plugin? :thaenkin:

in reply to Sean Tilley

Boiling Steam
Boiling Steam
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better make it a separate fediverse infrastructure so that it would not be specific to a single platform
in reply to Sean Tilley

Boiling Steam
Boiling Steam
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problem is... You cant have a recommendation system without individual user tracking (thats how you build recommendations !). I need to check again but the Mastodon API for example does not include much tracking by design so that would require a lot more capabilities to make it work.
in reply to Boiling Steam

Boiling Steam
Boiling Steam
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the other intermediate option is to have rss like feeds sharing organized by topics across instances. Thats not as good as recommendation systems but taht would be a hell of a lot better than the nothingness on Peertube right now
in reply to Boiling Steam

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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Yeah, I figured that maybe there might be an ethical way to do it, where the admin doesn't actually get any insight to said stats and the data doesn't go anywhere...but, you have a point.
in reply to Sean Tilley

Boiling Steam
Boiling Steam
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you could do recommendations in an pseudo anonymized way, as in having one's viewing data without having access to their identity or profile and replacing their id with a random hash. Again, norhing like that is implemented on the fediverse afaik
in reply to Boiling Steam

jayfax
jayfax
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Yes! Finally, someone gets it. PeerTube doesn't need to be replaced as a whole just because it's missing discovery.
in reply to Sean Tilley

Speak softly love 🇱🇰
Speak softly love 🇱🇰
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can you post the link to your videos? I was looking for some good stuff to watch.
in reply to Speak softly love 🇱🇰

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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I mean, it's nothing amazing, but I've got a decent bit of stuff here: https://spectra.video/c/deadsuperhero/videos

DeadSuperHero TV

I'm a cute geek with a love for music, writing, science fiction, and game development. I've always wanted to make videos, but I'm not always sure what kind of things they should be. Let's make some cool stuff together!
Spectra
in reply to Sean Tilley

Speak softly love 🇱🇰
Speak softly love 🇱🇰
• •
huh that's some good stuff. Huh by the way nice game you were building!
in reply to Speak softly love 🇱🇰

Speak softly love 🇱🇰
Speak softly love 🇱🇰
• •
BTW I should join peertube I mean not necessarily to make videos and all, but to comment and interact there seems to be some untouched goodness there.
in reply to Speak softly love 🇱🇰

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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well, if you'd ever like an account, I run Spectra, and we keep a pretty chill environment. It's at least a good place for user accounts, if all you want to do is watch something.

Let me know if you're ever interested, it's an open offer with no pressure intended.
in reply to Sean Tilley

Speak softly love 🇱🇰
Speak softly love 🇱🇰
• •
ohw that's nice of you. But I just created an account on Diode and even subscribed to you. :02smile: Anyway thanks a lot!
in reply to Speak softly love 🇱🇰

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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Oh, right on! Diode's a great place and I like the DIY community and the admin over there.
in reply to Speak softly love 🇱🇰

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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haha, thanks. I constantly pick up new ideas and put them back down after a while. On a happy note, I've gotten a lot of practice in this year with pixel art and programming.
Unknown parent

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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Yeah, that's fair. I try to do a good job running @spectravideo, and only block the really nasty instances. If you're ever curious about having an account, it's not a problem for me to hook you up.

It doesn't magically fix any complaints, mind you. 😛
@SpectraHQ
in reply to Sean Tilley

ilja :pumpkin_owo:
ilja :pumpkin_owo:
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> but it also feels like a lot of effort for very little payoff

This. I've had some ideas for video's, but in the end I just do something else because it feels like too much work. I know it's a matter of "just get starting", but there are other things I like to do as well, and then I end up choosing the other thing
in reply to ilja :pumpkin_owo:

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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Same. I don't even think that's necessarily a bad thing. I have a lot of interests that all kind of fight for my attention. Sometimes it's good to just follow your stream of consciousness and not worry too much about other plans.
in reply to Sean Tilley

Hank G
Hank G
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I haven't tried to use PeerTube as a primary platform for a couple of years. Back then, and sounds like still, content discovery was completely insufficient. That was even on-instance, and I was on a larger one. Finding stuff across federated instances was even worse. Still I posted some videos to a new instance (old one died) as well as YouTube last year: https://tube.tchncs.de/c/hanks_source_code_visualizations/videos?s=1
in reply to Sean Tilley

The Doctor
The Doctor
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Same. There pretty much is no useful search engine.
in reply to The Doctor

mmu_man
mmu_man
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even https://sepiasearch.org/ ?

Sepia Search

A search engine of PeerTube videos, channels and playlists, developed by Framasoft
Sepia Search
in reply to mmu_man

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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Someone else brought up SepiaSearch earlier in the thread, so I'll bring up my point again: as an effort, I respect Sepia's attempt to solve a core problem with the platform. However, as a solution to the discovery problem, it's not very good.

https://deadsuperhero.com/peertube-content-wasteland/​
in reply to Sean Tilley

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
• •
The main issue is that Sepia's searching is really just an aggregation of metadata, filtered by categories and keywords. On the surface, this sounds fine...but, when it comes to searching for videos that are actually created specifically for the PeerTube platform, this solution quickly falls apart.
Unknown parent

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
• •
Yeah, I was a huge fan of Planets for a long time. I used to read Planet Ubuntu, Planet Gnome, and Planet KDE every day to catch up on development news.
in reply to Sean Tilley

Renne Rocha
Renne Rocha
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maybe something like that, but with a nice UI would be one solution to find content on PeerTube instances. I don't like following entire instances, because sometimes just a few users are really producers of content that my instance visitors would be interested.
in reply to Renne Rocha

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
• •
Yeah, I hear you. If it helps, it's also possible to follow specific channels with your instance, so that a given channel's catalogue and new videos show up on your instance.
in reply to Sean Tilley

Nyla Smokeyface :heart_ace:
Nyla Smokeyface :heart_ace:
• •
May I ask why you're not interested in cross posting content to YouTube?
in reply to Nyla Smokeyface :heart_ace:

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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I actually don't have a problem with doing that. Some people want to get their stuff out to the greatest number of audiences, and I have no disrespect for people who take this approach. I even do that sometimes.

It's just that I think something that could give PeerTube a lot of staying power is exclusive creators and videos, and that an active community of people making videos in this space would be a big step towards making the video part of the fediverse healthy and active.
in reply to Sean Tilley

Mark Shane Hayden
Mark Shane Hayden
• •
I would use Youtube as a gateway to a peertube channel. Instead of outright cross-posting I would put only partial content on Youtube, tailored to appease the Gods of the Algorithm and Content Matching.

I would then link to or mention the full-featured or re-cut stuff available on Peertube. That way you could find an audience and have a way to deliver content that is interesting, in-depth etc without being buried by the clickbait or suppressed/altered/removed due to copyright actions.

(note I am not talking about willful/flagrant disregard of copyright and spreading of hateful or manipulative content here...I mean things like uncut recordings of live streams, in-depth coverage of a topic, archival footage or other fair-use examples of clips with music/imagery caught by false positives in content matching and so on)
in reply to Mark Shane Hayden

Sean Tilley
Sean Tilley
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Yeah, this is my mindset as well. I've been thinking about maybe doing delayed releases to YouTube, featuring only a handful of bigger videos that I want to get out into the open, with the emphasis that "if you want to see more, come to PeerTube."
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