I think we should discuss about what is holding PeerTube back. For starters a monetization system
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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afaik most YT creators get their money from sponsor blocks rather than ads these days, so nothing really changes there… i think the combination of sponsors and some patreon-style system is plenty, so i’m not sure monetisation is the issue
The fact that you posted a link to this video from YouTube not peer tube says a lot.
The point is outreach to the other platform. Sending engagement to this video on YouTube will boost it due to YouTube's algorithm. More exposure on YouTube = more potential new PeerTube users. Publishing this on PeerTube is preaching to the choir. As an alternative platform, you always need to maintain a presence on the main platform so you can encourage people looking to leave.
Publishing this on PeerTube is also a problem. I mentioned this in another post, but to expand, I really, really, want to like PeerTube. But:
- Many running servers don't fully grasp the bandwidth requirements. The video I tried to watch in that post got "popular" (800 views) and it took 2 minutes to even get the progress bar to load. People will leave.
- The federated nature is even more disjointed than Lemmy. It feels like a bunch of different sites still, which makes it feel like less content.
IMO PeerTube could be great, but it has a lot of shortcomings that aren't solved by adding features and fixing bugs.
It would better to make peer tube super easy to use without needing to do more than cluck once on. A button and get going
The thing holding open source back is the gatekeeping. Developers could spend more time actually working with u.i experts to make things easy, but no. Rather make everyone think it's some magic that requires 50 steps.
Make it easy to do business and give them a great product. That's all that needs to be done. Do that foss community, and you'll win.
Or at least publishing links to both would look better.
It's a nice thought but even this guy did not continue his Peertube instance. More of a thought experiment.
The main value of youtube for many of us is the enormous video collection, which is impractical for anyone else to duplicate. Need to fix an old washing machine (I did, recently)? Type in the make and model and there's an instructional vid. It's unfortunate that Google has exclusive control over such a resource, but here we are.
I wonder what would happen if Google decided to "turn off" YouTube.
I would be free from relying on a single google server for anything.
I think it’s running it at a loss too. But there’s no reason these platforms couldn’t be publicly owned.
Publicly owned by which government? Because I don't think YouTube's home of the US is really a good choice right now.
I agree. I’m not thinking about USA at all.
As for the EU, we should fund a federated or decentralised system. I think it works well on Lemmy. For example I know not to trust feddit.org for anything related to Palestine. Content on other servers shows their pro-Israel bias.
I think a system like that could benefit the US to a point, at least until the government block all external news and commentary.
It was, but monetization has been so aggressively everywhere that I think they finally are in the black at least since 2018.
I had no idea. You’re right. It was a $15B business in 2019. https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-alphabet-earnings-revenue-first-time-reveal-q4-2019
Makes the ads seem even more obscene now that I know that.
That only mentions revenue, we still don't know their operating costs.
You’re right 🤦🏻♂️
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And sadly now I have to watch a video. Wouldn't step by step instructions be quicker and more effective? Yes. They were. Now it's some video wasting my time.
Not sure that is a great example.
I hate that this has become so commonplace. Yes for some - mostly physical - things it’s much better if you can see someone do it. But finding an obscure setting in an app shouldn’t be a video.
Stuck on a 20 step installation process? Here’s a 10 minute video showing all the steps you already know before the phase you’re stuck. Sure you can scrub through it, but it’s still faster to skim and scroll through a text with images.
Unfortunately, when you do find a text article explaining the thing it's often unnecessarily long and padded out with meaningless fluff, just so more advertising can be stuffed within the contents.
This is the lure of a. I. And it's insidious.
Wouldn’t step by step instructions be quicker and more effective?
For this type of work, typically no, it's quicker and more effective to have someone show you exactly how to do it.
No. That's generalizing
It depends on the person learning. You may get more out of a video and I may get more from a book
I just can't get into using Peertube. I love the idea, but in my experience, it just doesn't work the way it should. Slow, low video quality, hard to get the federation working properly, and most importantly, a general lack of content creators I care to follow.
I stick with Odysee for this, and several other reasons.
Consider using Grayjay, you can combine creators from various sources to one app. Including YouTube, Peertube, Dailymotion, Odysee and lots of others.
I subscribe to some people on PeerTube and Dailymotion (only news orgs) alongside my Youtube subs, so that I am not only relying on YouTube
I do, but the desktop version is still barebones compared to FreeTube or the Odysee webpage. It's great on mobile, though!
And as for Peertube, I guess part of the problem is that it doesn't feel as connected as other Fediverse services seem to feel. Not sure why, it just feels really disjointed to me.
I don't think PeerTube will take a significant market share or become a lot more popular until it gets some sort of monetization scheme in place. Maybe if bandwidth for 1080p is basically free in 10-20 years.
Just a friendly headsup about Odysee. You are probably aware already and are selecting content carefully based on this, but Odysee hosts a lot of content that is considered disinformation, hate speech, far-right etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysee -> Moderation.
Dude.. you had my upvote indtil odysee!
I don't know if I need to ask, but what's wrong with Odysee?
So in other words you're bragging about how stupid you are ?? Did Odysee trigger something in you ? Do you have a special kind of PTSD ?
You kind of prove a point
Joined PeerTube last month and have had great success with it in terms of as a platform and place to share art / content, though of course the views have been low.
I'm sure there is a megathread elsewhere but would love to see an acceleration of folks adopting the Fediverse. My talking point has been to sort of sell Fediverse alternatives (Lemmy, Pixelfed, Mastodon) as superior to other big tech alternatives out there (such as BlueSky and Flashes). We are either at the vanguard of a mass migration or just migrating while no one else is intending to, which I guess amounts to the same thing!
If any of the top 500 youtube channels joined peertube, things would surely change. Unfortunately a few of those have started their own video platforms e.g Mr Beast has his own.
I'm sure if a few of the top youtube channels of the biggest countries joined peertube that would also give an important push to peertube.
Linux is finally becoming mainstream. I love it.
That's kinda true, but what does that have to do with the comment you replied to?
There was a lot of energy around strategy when I joined in January (can you guess why? Lol). The limiting factor seems to be chosen participation. Lots of people have opinions, not many people want to organize their thoughts into, eg. an effective advertising campaign, a github pull request, or basically anything other than meaningless musing.
Here were some threads in my message history I found insightful: https://lemmy.world/post/25512565 https://lemmy.world/post/25553607 https://lemmy.world/post/27824597
I'm not really skilled in anything relevant, so my strategy has been:
- On mainstream social platforms, point out any hint of enshittification and follow up with a recommendation toward a specific Fediverse alternative.
- Link directly to discussions or articles I found on Lemmy that I thought were worth sharing
- Building partnerships in my existing communities with the corresponding Lemmy communities to encourage user flow
Lots of people have opinions, not many people want to organize their thoughts into, eg. an effective advertising campaign, a github pull request, or basically anything other than meaningless musing.
This is the nature of free work. Any donation of time is sparse and intermittent. People have bills to pay. The best and brightest want to be paid well for their time. This requires a business model of some kind, and monetising that work. This is antithetical to FOSS projects, and is the reason they will almost always be inferior to projects with large budgets with teams of UX designers. /obligatory COME AT ME BRO
I think Peertube is more of a Vimeo alternative. YouTube is built around advertising.
Really? And here I thought they were all video platforms. Youtube advertising is just an added layer of enshittification.
I'm guessing maybe they meant that the people uploading to YouTube more often than not are hoping to make money from it. Or even if that's not what they meant, it is definitely a big difference between platforms.
Sure, I was being slightly facetious to make a point about the issues that Peertube solves. IMHO the most valuable part of Youtube is the one Peertube replaces — videos.
The Youtube advertising that people seem to make money off is the part I already do my damnedest to avoid with third party apps and front ends. Peertube solves that as well.
Same issue as Lemmy. Not enough people see centralized media as an issue and thus the status quo will continue.
Like with fucking, friction is the difference between pleasure and pain. If I click a YT link and the video starts playing, no lag, no buffering, just plays, I will come back.
I tried to watch the French dude describing Texas, hosted on Peertube. It took 17 minutes, 3 attempts, 2 error messages, lag while playing.
Can't change the paradigm with thrift.
Sounds like a personal issue TBH
That's weird, I watch it every day and have never had an issue like that.
Interesting. I’ve watched some videos without issue, though not many since there aren’t that many to watch.
Ehhh, I feel it's not just that.
Yeah, people don't think centralized media is an issue, and thus don't join Fediverse, causing it to be a little dead and discourages others from using it as an alternative.
However, YT is a job for the thousands that create content on there, and reasonably so, they need money to make said content and pay bills. Which means ads, cause be real, most people (including me) don't wanna join a Patreon to see their content. I just can't think of many creators who I love enough to drop consistent money on them, never mind several at once.
Lemmy doesn't need to be monetized to entice people, because Reddit wasn't built on that (karmawhoring gets you no money). Even pixelfed could make it as an alternative, because creators aren't paid by ads or Insta themselves, they get money from sponsorships and promoting their shops.
But YT? It's built to make money from putting in ads. So unless creators lived off of sponsors alone and the few who subscribe to Patreon, they're shit outta luck if they join Peertube.
That is a very good point and is something that needs to be sorted out. There is or at least was a video platform that paid crypto that I think had the right ideas, but was not well executed and frankly even if it was great, most crypto projects were scams.
I do suspect that as we make our way more into the AI and robotics era, that how we measure value will shift and suddenly decentralized platforms will generate some form of income of it will even be called that. Until then, you are right, there is little incentive for creators to move to a platform that makes them no money and people are ok with their privacy and data being shared so the status quo it is.
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