this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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I saw a few videos shared on PeerTube recently, and created an account on an instance. However, unlike Mastodon and Lemmy I'm struggling to discover channels to subscribe to. When I use the search functions on my instance, most results are either interesting channels which haven't been updated in years, or random foreign language TV shows and episodes.

Just for example, if I'm trying to find videos on "Gaming" on one of the largest instances, the most recent video is over 1 year ago: https://tilvids.com/search?categoryOneOf=7

Is discoverability on PeerTube bad, or are there barely any active channels?

Edit: BTW one very active creator on PeerTube is https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos and his videos are excellent. But can there really only be a handful of active creators to follow on the whole platform?

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The discoverability is incredibly bad. Peertube has a ton of videos and more servers than lemmy by a long shot iirc. The problem is that the „frontend“ has seen no love like ever. There recently came an app which is nice but otherwise, its very underloved.

Feel free to voice your concerns in [email protected] for example. The devs should be available through the fedi somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is there a non ml community? I try to avoid the "genocide is ok when China does it" instances

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago

Yes someone suggested [email protected] and world seems to have one as well.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

Thank you very much! I love the cooperation in the fedi.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Its growing like crazy. Try the app they just released. It uses some search that works better than instance search

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[–] [email protected] 116 points 2 days ago (3 children)

It's both horrible discovery and a limited number of creators.

But, for discoverability, https://sepiasearch.org/ might help you find things to watch, since it's the only good multi-server search I've seen. (And run by the peertube devs.)

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 day ago (26 children)

I say this everytime someone talks about peertube. You should not need to leave the website to use the website. If I search "crazy guy uses rake to play football", and it's not in the results page, I'm not going to go to ANOTHER website, to search THIS website, for a guy who doesn't understand how to play sports.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah, I agree.

When it comes to building a fediverse service there's a really delicate balance to find with making it unambiguous you're engaging with multiple services, vs creating a singular and cohesive enough user experience, and it seems like the peertube devs just learn reaaally far towards the former at the expense of the latter.

Its a bit frustrating.

Edit: I learned from another user on this thread that sepia search can be enabled by an instance as their search functionality. That definitely helps

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Sepia Search is something that's also build into PeerTube, if the admin have enabled Global Search. Sepia Search uses this list of instances: https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances

The same can be enabled in PeerTube. You can see here, that I have it enabled on my instance:

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (13 children)

It's both horrible discovery and a limited number of creators.

100%. I created my own instance and set it to auto-follow other instances. There's like 975 or something and still not really much interesting. Can confirm TILVids also denied my federation request.

I'm doing my part by uploading my own videos 🙂

If I set it the discovery to "trending" the top video is 2 years old 🤷

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago

In that case issue is some instances do not allow global search and that's why search will limit to only channels you follow and your instance.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I would not recommend using tilvids.com. They do not federate with anyone and do not have global search enabled, which means search only shows videos from tilvids.com. It is however, possible to follow channels from tilvids.com from other platforms (instances).

Simply copy the link from tilvids.com and paste it into the search bar of an instance that has global search enabled.

Platforms can also follow channels directly from tilvids and the videos will show up on said platform.


Discoverability can be a bit finicky on PeerTube. Especially if you don't know how to fine tune the filters.

If you take a look at this list: https://peertube.wtf/home and this one https://lemmy.wtf/post/15810205, you'll see that there's plenty of content creators to follow. I discover new ones almost every day.

There really isn't any other big content creators on PeerTube, other than The Linux Experiment, but if you wanna see your favorite creator on PeerTube, ask them.

If you are looking for a platform (instance) to register on, I recommend looking at this list: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15816115

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Simply copy the link from tilvids.com

...what link?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago

The link of the channel or the channel handle.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I just rejoined PeerTube after I had a quick look years ago, and it's gotten way better since then, actually. I found out Space Quest Historian is on it, too!

But yeah, discoverability isn't good. Lack of an algorithm also makes bingewatching impossible - for better and worse, I guess.

As you linked them, I'd also recommend peertube.wtf - they even reacted very quickly when I reported a transphobic german conspiracy channel/server.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Excellent instance!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Oh :D

Well, you are doing a great job, and I like what I have seen so far! Keep up the good work!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Veronica explains is one channel I always enjoys (if you like Linux).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

She is on her own instance now

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

that's the chicken and egg problem of any social network: people don't want to go to a social network with only a few number of content creators and content creators don't want to spend their time managing another platform for only a few number of viewer... social networks needs people to be alive and so if you are interested in Peertube, it will be hard at first but use it so, just like voting system where every vote count, the platform will have one more user and if other people do the same, the platform will grow and if it grow enough it will start to attract bigger content creator, etc...

It's in people hand to break the cycle and makes that Youtube alternative a viable alternative.

I'm a peertube instance admin for years now and closed my google/youtube account 10 years ago, so I'm doing my part to break it.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 days ago (13 children)

I have a Peertube server, and I've requested to follow tilvids, and they denied my request, and they also do not follow my Peertube server. I think one issue with tilvids may be that they essentially choose not to federate, and therefore you won't find much because of this.

I just searched for "Gaming" on my Peertube server and I seem to get a non-ending list of servers. Unfortunately, one column wide, but a lot. When I search for King's Quest, I am also getting a seemingly unending stream of videos.

I follow every Peertube server I can that is clearly not fascist, primarily NSFW, NSFL, etc.

Maybe you just need to find a server that is more federated with other Peertube servers.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (4 children)

This is the issue with federated youtube. It should ALL be federated, and all searchable, mandatory.

Now if I the user decide I don't want to see an instance/video/creator, I should have two options.

Block - Used for when content offends you. It has zero place being in your feed.

Not Interested - Used when content isn't offensive per se, but you really don't care about it either. It's not completely blocked from your feed, but it's certainly not getting first dibs to show up from now on.

This leaves one thing that some may feel is an issue. Lets say there were a small dicked loser who did nazi salutes in public, and wanted to upload hateful content. Lets give him a random name for the sake of simplicity. Let's call him.....Elon. Hypothetical name.

So lets say small dicked Elon, starts uploading hateful content. On youtube you would report him. On peertube, since he owns the hosted server, you'd be reporting him to himself. Which is as you can imagine, useless.

So from here, you block them, and then you never have to see their hateful content ever again.

Because their rise, only comes from people giving these people attention.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Just horrible discovery leading creators to abandon the platform.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah, that must be it. It's a real shame because the core technology seems to be solid. Streaming 1080p videos from other instances just works. But finding channels to follow seems impossible.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah that’s been my experience with most of the fediverse so far. It’s not going anywhere unless someone comes up with a solution to the discoverabilty problems.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I created [email protected] in case anyone finds channels, videos, ect that they like.

We can help with the discovery!

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)
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