[andypants]

If your instance does not use HTTPS, it can't follow other peertube instances and vice versa. You can also close registration. However, the videos are still public.

If you don't mind that other instances might mirror your videos, you can run a regular instance and simply not follow any other instances. Only your local videos will show up on your instance, but your videos might show up on other people's instances (if they choose to follow you).

The server is always seeding the videos, so the torrenting part only really kicks in if you have multiple people watching the same video at the same time. If your browser can't use webrtc, it will stream the video like a regular video. I think there is no option to disable the torrent functionality yet, but there is a github issue for it.

[tjoff]

Something like that was exactly what I was afraid of and that certainly is a dealbreaker.

These are private videos (though nothing necessarily embarrassing or inappropriate) and making them public must not be possible from a client point of view (other than downloading and manually uploading to a different service).

[andypants]

I just checked the upload settings. Actually there is a 'private' visibility setting for videos (and 'unlisted'), but I'm not sure how it works and who specifically can see private videos. Peertube is still in early stages right now and lots of features are still missing.