Peertube has other advantages, among which interoperability. A relevant quote from the main developer:

“Where it gets really, really exciting, is that when you respond to a video status on Mastodon, the message will be sent to the instance of PeerTube. Your response will thus be visible beneath the video, in the comment space. And yes, if another person at the other end of the world responds to your comment via their instance of PeerTube or Mastodon, you’ll see it as a response to your status in Mastodon. If tomorrow Diaspora (the Facebook alternative behind Framasphere) implements ActivityPub, it will work in the same way. We’ll have plenty of platforms that are capable of federating comments.

Free alternatives are criticized, often rightly, for not having added value compared to centralized platforms. With ActivityPub, we now have our first big advantage. Because on the centralized platforms, you’ll have a hard time viewing, under your YouTube video, the reactions of people who commented on Facebook, Twitter, etc. ”

source: https://medium.com/@chocobozzz/peertube-a-federated-video-st...

> Because on the centralized platforms, you’ll have a hard time viewing, under your YouTube video, the reactions of people who commented on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I consider it an advantage to not have those comments. Context matters. Signal to noise ratio on Facebook is close to 0 for most things that are open to everyone. Specialized subreddits have a good SNR. HN can too. Probably closed Facebook groups do as well.

And context matters. The discussion about a Blender tutorial will be different if posted to a group of beginners than if a group of professionals were to comment on it. If I want to help people learn Blender I can seek out beginners and help them in their groups, but when I am not looking to spend time helping beginners I’d rather not have every comment by every person wondering about every little detail show up.

It's not really a problem. Pleroma for example already offers ways you can filter out certain platforms from communicating with you (or do transforms on messages like adding Subject lines or hiding the message body behind a button).

PeerTube could do the same; hide content you don't want to see below your videos or maybe whitelist certain places to allow commenting from them.

That sounds like a job for filters, which could be provided by browser extensions, userscripts, or forks of the platform hosted on other sites.

Question: how does moderation work in ActivityPub?

There is no notion of moderation in ActivityPub itself AFAIK, but I suppose you're asking what happens to e.g. comments that have been sent to federated servers/software and then deleted on the original platform.

In general, when that happens the comment is removed on the host platform, then a deletion request is sent to the federated platforms. There is no guarantee that other platforms will delete the content (although if they don't, they are generally considered malicious and should be reported), much like deleted forum posts can be viewed through WebArchive.

Given the general quality of YouTube comments, this is a bug, not a feature.

> - As a business I will link to a youtube video but not a PT video because I know YT will stay up.

So you never stumbled upon a news or blog post (or playlist) containing an embedded video thats now "no longer available due to copyright issues", "switched to private", "not available for your country", "deleted by the user", ...?

Happens about once a week to me. Thats why I started to "backup" my playlists with youtube-dl.

When I feel like some mindless entertainment I'll hit r/documentaries. I prefer YT links because I know it's reliable. I tend not to follow links to other sites because they tend to be spammy. If PT establishes itself as something that will just play the content I asked for without being spammy then I'll give it a click even if its CDN isn't as good as Google.

For me it comes down to the content I view on Youtube being available exclusively on Youtube.

Critical analysis of media is my jam, this kind of content is niche compared to the stuff that pulls a billion views on YT.

I'll happily comb through PT but I doubt it can fill my bottomless hunger for this kind of content.

Iunno, many "businesses" have sudden changes in policy and then decide to delete much of history with no consideration of its impacts.

* Reddit deciding to erase/ban subreddits with any drug theme, among others.

* Newspapers delete their comments sections, not just going forward, but forever in the past.

* Image hosters decide to ban hotlinking or go subscription-only. Since I drive a 200X car, this is a pain when many of the guides posted onto forums are basically useless.

With Youtube demonetizing videos (often useful but low-volume How-to videos that nobody would subscribe to), that's another nail in the coffin for them continuing to host video that can't earn them revenue.

If PeerTube instances are federated, and video metadata is publicly available, anyone can compete to offer a portal to PeerTube.

As a business, it is shortsighted to prefer link to a YT video that can be removed or deleted just as easily as a PeerTube video. My YT playlists are littered with deleted or otherwise removed videos. The only way to ensure a video you link to never disappears is to rip it and host it yourself.

>PT can't compete against that

Good, because it's not a competitor. It's an alternative, and there's plenty of space for alternatives to exist. Not everything has to be a direct competition; It's ok for YouTube to exist, and it's ok for PeerTube to exist too.

I routinely find linked YouTube videos that have been removed, sometimes with no indication as to why.

Of all YouTube feats you pick suggestions? On my side they tend to be terrible