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- cross-posted to:
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PeerTube is fantastic with its decentralized model that prioritizes user privacy and control. However, it still struggles to gain widespread popularity.
What do you think could be done to enhance PeerTube’s appeal and functionality, possibly even becoming a serious alternative to YouTube?
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The idea of PT being able to compete and differentiate itself from Google to content creators by paying them money is ridiculous. You’re attempting to attack the main strength of the competition, and they are way, way, way, WAY better at it than you are. It’s fucking doomed from the start. You have to play to your strengths, and manufacturing commercial content for revenue is just not what PeerTube’s design is even intended for.
Ten years ago you could have made an exciting pitch involving a block chain that pays hosters and content creators but now we can see how stupid that is. Well it doesn’t get less stupid without the blockchain.
From what I watch on YouTube, the best content isn’t monetizable… pretty much every creator I like relies almost completely on Patreon and merch.
I think the most important thing is having a good experience. First of all there doesn’t seem to be a good hub for peertube. I don’t exactly understand how it works and i assumed it would work like Lemmy, like hop on anywhere and you’ll find videos from all over but that didn’t seem to be the case in the few peertube pages I found.
They look like shit, like someone’s personal web 1.0 page from late 90s, and has an extremely limited video collection from like a single person. idk if I’ve done it wrong; let me know…
It’s the experience. For all its faults, YouTube has an easy url and app, it pushes videos on people so even if you don’t have an account you can experience it passively (which I’m sure not something people here would want but requiring the user to be proactive is a barrier to entry which severely limits popularity which disincentivizes content creators) and while everyone shits on its UI it’s centuries ahead of any peertube site I’ve seen (admittedly i haven’t seen many but after a few very disappointing ones i just stopped looking).
More peers.
Which can only really be addressed by making it easier / less of a hassle to become a peer.
I for one would love to host a peertube instance, but I keep running into a wall when I try.
We need to make it more profitable to post on peertube than to post on yt.
That’s probably impossible, since there are no ads on PeerTube. There’s nothing keeping content creators from using YouTube AND PeerTube though.
I think if we do a crypto based pay per gb for generalised data delivery we could do it.
Adding crypto is just adding another layer of complexity imho.
An integration with Liberapay would be in the right direction, I think.
That would mean that some walk away from YouTube. Thus shrinking the ad revenue.
It’s a problem.
Yes, do both platforms, and also we’ve already figured out that the patron model works. If enough people like something, some will pay to support the creator.
That fact doesn’t grow peertube right now, but I think it means we don’t actually need to monetise peertube directly.
i think all the issues can be surmounted if they find a way to pay creators like youtube does.
A lot of niche YouTubers say that they get a most revenue from patreon and other sites like that so it seems like there’s already existing avenues to post videos and get paid via a different site
Yeah, it’s not about monetization. I think for content creators the biggest limiting factor is the user base. If you make a video but nobody sees it then what’s the point of making a video? You want people watching your creations and the more users a site has the more likely you’re going to have people watching your video. So a real suggestion would be something like video visibility which is kind of a hit or miss on Youtube since the magical Youtube algorithm pretty much throws only clickbait.
maybe we can somehow encourage creators to post to both in a why not kind of way, until peertube has critical mass?
Content, monetization, and ubiquity.
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Content: PT skews heavily into Linux and Linux adjacent topics. And that’s fine, but when I say I watch more YT than regular TV, I’m not kidding. And its because of the diversity and variety of channels. Things like History Hit or Every Frame a Painting, and silly shit like Red Letter Media. YouTube isn’t just “let’s plays” and game streaming. So Peertube can’t be “Just Linux”
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Monetization: Creators have to get paid. That’s just reality. It would be a fine world if everyone could spend hours doing their passion for free and not have to worry about deeding themselves. If you want #1, you need a certain amount if full time creators, and for that they need to get paid.
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Ubiquity: Watching more YouTube than regular TV, I don’t want to sit in front of my computer to do it. We need to be able to access it from smart TVs, ROKU sticks, etc… And not just a port of the website that requires a mouse and keyboard, but something optimized to work with smart TV remote controls.
The issue with the Fediverse (not that I don’t love the fediverse, I do) is that all of those three things require large scale framework and organisational planning; which is the antithesis to what the Fediverse is all about.
Tl;Dr – Large scale success of PeerTube as a thing is largely impossible without abandoning the concept of federation itself.
Why does PT have to be a place that creators get paid? Yes, that is essential if we want peertube to TAKE OVER THE WORLD. But what is wrong with providing a platform that ISN’T driven by content revenue along side YouTube? Those creators have needs that aren’t being catered to elsewhere.
Ok, show us all the free PT content you’ve made without getting paid. What’s that, you can’t pay your rent with PeerTube views, you need a real job you say? Well that’s why there’s no content, creators need to eat too.
I mean it’s not hard to find my PT server with my content on it. And yeah, NO ONE IS EVERY GOING TO PAY TO SEE MY CONTENT. That’s kind of my point. There’s millions of people producing content THAT IS NOT COMMERCIALLY VIABLE, and they do this even though it doesn’t pay the rent. Like, I honestly don’t even know what your point is except to deny reality.
He’s answering the question of why it’s not more popular. And he’s right.
Then expect Peertube to be more niche as no one wants to post to it.
okay? it’s meeting my use cases, tell me why I care?
The discussion is on how to get more people to use it.
Nothing is wrong with that at all. But you’re never going to get enough content to increase your total subscriber base as long as your creators have to spend most of their time working other jobs.
What if I’m not manufacturing content, what if I just have things I want to say? Why can’t we have one fucking platform that isn’t monetized?
Sure. Absolutely.
But that’s not what this thread is about and that isn’t what I was replying to. If you want to start a thread saying “Why PeerTube doesn’t need to grow to be a great place.” knock yourself out. I agree with you.
But this thread specifically is about, and I quote…
…possibly even becoming a serious alternative to YouTube?
And for that, you need monetization.
Stay on topic.
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Legislation that hobbles youtube
Make it easy for creators to be paid, recruit services like nebula and means tv to use it as its backend, make the ui prettier than YouTube not just an orange copycat.
And make it possible for people to set it up as a tiktok competitor focused on short videos with stitches and video replies easy which makes discussion and and creators explaining complex topics easy and straight to the point (which is why i use TikTok theres so much useful knowledge people teach without long intros and fluff like YouTube)
Search up front.
Make it easier to find an instance to sign up for?
I don’t think it’s possible to seriously compete with youtube. Youtube would actually have to die first.
What I’m about to say is probably dumb but… I think it wouldn’t be really possible for PeerTube to become a serious alternative to YouTube, because of decentralization.
Like, sure, that may be a good thing in certain cases - we’re literally on Lemmy - but I want to be able to access content from most PeerTube instances using one singular instance, which isn’t really possible with PeerTube. As a result, the majority of instances feel dead.
I think the only actual way of making a serious alternative to YouTube is to make an open-source and centralized alternative to YouTube (if that doesn’t already exist), but I might be missing something.
Isn’t the entire point of federation to be able to do what you’re describing?
Because videos are heavy and can be lost during federation, a PeerTube instance can only federate with another few instances and not with the entire network iirc, so the content is widely dispersed among PeerTube instances, which means that each instance has very little content.
This is why I think the solution would be to have a centralized open-source platform for this. Because there’s no federation, people are encouraged to go to the main instance, meaning that it will be more alive.
Data streaming costs have to be better addressed. How does the bill get paid? It’s really that simply.
There’s a webpage for that https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/ Top 5 are:
- Share channel administration between several users (103 votes)
- “Audio only” video quality (91 votes)
- Mobile phone client (91 votes)
- Allow third parties to contribute bandwidth (89 votes)
- Support multilingual videos (67 votes)
Feel free to vote or add more ideas.
What kinda of users do you want? Creators or eyeballs? The joinpeertube website doesn’t seem to cator to users wanting to just watch videos.
I am assuming it is about at the fediverse finish?
I prefer video on teevee so that boxes me into spytube. can’t even get nebula for my device or whatever anchors are shilling now.
Such device coverage does not require mega corp market position it seems.
While first in time group grew quickly, their replacement will take a hot minute to mature imho
I am surprised fediverse is as active as it is and has enough depth to gain users.
I am also doing my part around this here place too lol
