A lot of people see the usefulness of PeerTube but don't move because the creators they watch are on YouTube. It's the same for the creators, though - they can't move off of YouTube entirely, because none of their viewers will go to a PeerTube instance just to watch that one creator. Thus nobody moves to PT unless there are other factors (like extremist creators moving because their videos keep getting removed by YT).

Another major problem that prevents creators from hosting on PeerTube is that there are no ads - many see direct-from-YouTube revenue driven by Premium views/Ad views generate a significant portion of their income. Even Linus Tech Tips, with their audience of gamers who mostly running an ad blocker, sees YouTube generate 26% of their profit[0], almost exactly as much as they get from sponsors spots in their videos. If everyone were to move to PT, we'd either need an intermediary for ads, or only creators with audiences that could afford to personally finance them (via Patreon or similar) would be able to survive and make a living off of running their channel.

0: https://youtu.be/-zt57TWkTF4?t=391

This is my big pet peeve with people who describe Youtube's demonetization policies as "censorship" and propose Peertube as a replacement. I'm not going to get entangled in the question of what responsibility big social media has and what it should or shouldn't do about giving people platforms, but I will say that if you believe demonetization and being de-prioritized in youtube's discovery algorithms is being deplatformed/censored, moving to a service that doesn't really have monetization or youtube-style content discovery isn't the solution.

If you move your content to PeerTube and want both an audience and to be paid, you'll need a combination of third party services and other social media, and will likely end up with similar problems re: advertisers cutting out "unacceptable content".

I do think it'd probably be better if the content provider was divested from this layer and focused on only providing media, but Peertube doesn't really solve these social/economic problems people complain about with Youtube.

One way people could start is by uploading content on both, Youtube and a PeerTube instance and mention their PeerTube content in YouTube videos. This way they also create a kind of online backup, in case YouTube's algorithms decide to take them down.

If I am remembering right from linus tech tips, they are not allowed to try get viewers to go to an other platform. The are some ways one can indirect reference other platforms, but videos intended to get people off youtube is basically not allowed.

Oh my, I did not even know that. That's so toxic. Shouldn't that fall under some kind of monopoly law?

There are a number of prominent YouTubers who advertise their own alternative platforms fairly regularly, if "indirectly". There are also videos about LTT's own video service Floatplane on YouTube [0]

I'm guessing that either there's some clause in the YouTube partner/adsense program saying you can't just redirect your viewers elsewhere or you can't upload videos with the sole purpose of saying "go here for more videos".

That said, I'd be interested to see the details of what GP was talking about, because I believe it exists, I just wonder what the exacts are.

[0] https://youtu.be/oOOOfZWXPu4

I was going to say that digging through wan shows to find a reference was too hard but then duckduckgo gave me a hit of a HN post I made that referenced the twitter post.

https://twitter.com/linustech/status/1008752236027973632?lan...

And here is the wan show discussing it (thanks to a comment on HN): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKtJY6soCds&t=698s

The only restriction YouTube has is that you can’t create videos that purely say “go check us out on this other platform”, which is what they used to do for WAN show when it was only streamed on Twitch but announced on YT.

Yeah, I've seen several creators mention "extended" or "uncensored" versions of their content on another platform. Off the top of my head, Corridor Digital is one example that advertises their alternative content pretty heavily.

Linus and co founded Floatplane, which is explicitly another platform competing with YouTube. It isn't very successful, but they certainly did it.

https://www.floatplane.com/

Wasnt't that Twitch? They talk about Floatplane on YT often enough.

I think when certain very talented creators get "demonetized" and they have a bad experience with customer service trying to understand why, and maybe suspect the criteria changed without they're knowing, it's relatively understandable to over-react and say their hard work was censored, even if knowing it doesn't meet the legal standard. I wouldn't let it bother you so much.

"It's the same for the creators, though - they can't move off of YouTube entirely, because none of their viewers will go to a PeerTube instance just to watch that one creator."

Is it so hard to be on both? Something I like about YouTube compared to some other platforms is they never (to the best of my knowledge) engage in exclusives or impose exclusivity conditions. And even when they develop new features, I've rarely seen Google try to restrict those.

just upload same videos to both platforms, people will come slowly.

Only folks that can sustain themselves, like forgotten weapons, are patreon supported. But you would have to create a channel from the beginning to be patreon supported.

It's not that you have to create the channel from the beginning to be Patreon supported, but that you have to be willing to forego the additional YouTube revenue even if Patreon payment s become enough to support you.

Peertube is really just an "app" providing a simple way to host and publish your content online outside the control of "service" providers that can also easily be accessed and shared by the "fediverse" (in this case activitypub supporting federated networks of servers and end users).

You can consume peertube content with any activitypub client that supports its types. In short, peertube is an accessible way for users to publish their videos to activitypub.

Yes, Owncast [0] is another example of a media app that is in the process of adding ActivityPub protocol support [1] and become part of the Fediverse. I hope they'll be largely compatible in the way they implemented their federation support.

[0] https://owncast.online/

[1] https://github.com/owncast/owncast/tree/gek/activity-pub-1

Peertube uses very simple and straightforward ActivityStreams (JSON) properties so it's very unlikely anyone is going to make something incompatible.

However, i don't think every property is standardized yet, so having another implementation will be useful to specify everything for future implementations.

> Is PeerTube supremely unpopular (...), or am I missing something?

One reason of seeming more inpopular than it actually is, lies in that while there are many PeerTube instances, they are not all federating together. They are selective and some are not federating at all.

Also I am not sure if counting of views works all that well yet, and Likes require either signing up to individual instances, or spreading of video link via Mastodon to get liked (via ActivityPub integration).

Both the federation and the level of integration with other Fediverse apps is a work in progress and steadily improving.

Maybe the idea of PeerTube is a lot nice than the user experience? I can't say, I haven't tried PeerTube. I feel like this is pretty common when it comes to avoiding big tech though. When Github was bought out by Microsoft I went all in on Gitlab, but alas, the company I work for now uses Github. The sheer gravity of it pulled me back in.

The experience is fine, but PeerTube by definition is decentralized, so measurements won't always be indicative of usefulness...

Perhaps the most notable fact is how upvoted this article is. Shows you how much people want to believe, maybe?

What exactly is your point? That it's inferior technology because it's unpopular?

In the video streaming world, yeah that is true. These platforms are not just hosts, they are discovery platforms and if there isn't any content to discover, it isn't a good platform.

Peertube discovery is based on a "following" model based on the ActivityPub protocol. You don't need a Peertube account to follow video creators, because:

- you can subscribe to them from Mastodon or any fediverse client

- your friends on the Fediverse can "reshare" (reshare/boost) videos from their favorite content creator

There's also a "decentralized" (as in "selfhosted") search engine called SepiaSearch being developed for use with Peertube.

I can't say i'm fulfilled yet by the content available on Peertube (although there is some great quality content), but at least i'm happy i'm not being dragged into recommendation hell by a hostile machine learning model trying to maximize advertising revenues... and Peertube federation keeps growing with more and more non-profits running instances for specific interests and communities, and more and more content creators ditching the creator-hostile [0] platforms for Peertube.

[0] Some creators believe that tracking their viewers and serving them dubious advertisement is bad. Most creators agree that automated copyright strikes like Youtube is doing (completely ignoring copyright exemptions like fair use) is bad.

> The channel in this post has 20 YouTube subscribers and no more than a couple thousand total YouTube views.

...that's quite a lot even on YouTube, no? I always assumed the videos recommended for their sheer popularity were a "top 1%" sort of situation.

No, this is nowhere near a lot, even for small channels. Make a quality video about something useful and there is a good chance you get more views than this persons whole channel

Well, if you're comparing against all YouTube users, or even all YouTube users who have ever uploaded a video, then yes, it's a lot. On the other hand, compared to most content being viewed on YouTube, it's not even tiny, it's minuscule. There are many niche hobbyist communities or individual hobbyist singers getting much more than that. 20 subscribers basically means that not even your friends and family are looking at your channel.

I have a random "a vs. b" video on my personal channel with 150k views. A few thousand views is obtainable by accident just naming your video a certain way.

> 20 subscribers basically means that not even your friends and family are looking at your channel.

I agree with your interpretation overall, but there's other factors at play:

- Peertube isn't trying to force everyone to have an account like Youtube is

- the Peertube federation is much younger, and some would say it reached maturity for broader usage very recently (this year)

- view count does not account for people downloading the video directly using HTTPS direct connection and/or Webtorrent, only those using the default web client

I think there is a slight misunderstanding. The numbers from my GP were about YouTube subscribers and views, not PeerTube. The point being that this is a minuscule YT channel that is moving to PeerTube, one that is hardly representative of anything.

For comparison, here [0] is the YT channel that has moved to PeerTube, and here [1] is a random musician's channel that I happen to follow. The second is many times larger, even though it is a single person's channel.

[0] https://youtube.com/channel/UCj-eQP-Mt6Eo0mh3iwdB9Hg

[1] https://youtube.com/c/JoostLameris

Thanks for the clarifiation! I had misunderstood the original comment indeed.

Back in high school I had a "gaming channel" where I posted just random clips of my friends and I. The subscriber count peaked around 350. No idea how many views were in total. But I removed the channel years ago.

So I'm guessing as long as you post regularly you can get thousands of subscribers without much effort.