[lewisflude]

Went on https://peertube.video/ and immediately got a bunch of porn. Not really sure from a consumer aspect this is yet fully there from a UX perspective!

But the tech is really interesting and as a federated alternative I could see it doing really well. Best of luck to the team!

[ajuc]

This is the nazi bar effect. If everybody forbids something, and you allow it - you quickly get associated only with that 1 thing you allow others don't.

Normal people don't want to hang around in a bar that allows nazis, and nazis from everywhere go there because it's the only place.

Peertube solves the easy problem (infrastructure) and ignores the hard problems: search, discoverability, moderation, accountability, handling all the relevant laws.

[littlestymaar]

Peertube, 5 years in: YouTube still has a monopoly on generalist video streaming, but at least pornhub and xvideos are dead.

[bogwog]

Anyone can start an instance and post whatever they want. Just because it has "peertube" in the URL doesn't mean it's an "official" instance or anything like that.

[majewsky]

Whether a service is centralized or decentralized might matter a lot to us here, but to 99% of people it's utterly irrelevant. An implementation detail.

Therefore their mental model will equate Youtube (a service) with Peertube (an application used by multiple services). If illegal content is on some Peertube, it's "on Peertube" and it drags down all the other stuff that is "on Peertube". Just like how big advertisers withdraw all their campaigns from all of Youtube when a single popular Youtuber posts a particularly distasteful video. They don't recognize the substructure inside Youtube's community because, to the public majority, Youtube is a monolithic thing. It's going to be the same for Peertube. (Unless Peertube has a better marketing department than behemoths like Youtube, which it likely has not.)

[bogwog]

The solution to that then is to not pretend like PeerTube is centralized by hijacking the name for your URL. If you're hosting an instance, give it a unique name. If MyCoolVideos.com is a peertube instance with a bunch of child porn, then MyCoolVideos.com is going to get labeled as a bad site, and no one will know or care if the underlying technology is PeerTube.

This is a problem with federated services in general. People always seem to want to register on the "official" instance, when really there is none. I think there should be a solution to help people make the decision, or better yet not force them to make a decision at all. Maybe some OpenID-type login/account system should be used instead of having to make an account on a single instance. Or simply stop trying to market the underlying tech, like Mastodon or PeerTube, since that's not going to make a difference to the end-user and will just confuse them.

[lewisflude]

Sounds like centralisation to me! No more open than making a WordPress blog. Am I wrong?

[bogwog]

You are wrong because the difference is that the individual instances are federated. This means that they connect together in the backend to provide users with each other's content.

When you go on Youtube and watch someone's channel, the side bar shows you suggested videos from other channels.

PeerTube can do that same thing even if every channel is hosted on its own instance. The administrator just needs to link their instance with others (so they can, for example, avoid linking to porn instances or other undesired/unrelated topics), and PeerTube will start displaying videos hosted on other instances all without requiring the user to visit another website.

[lewisflude]

That makes sense! So KittensTube, MagicTricksTube and CleanTube could all connect to each other and act as a network of federated sites based off of PeerTube?

[bogwog]

Yup, it's the same concept as GNU social, Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.

[edf13]

Thanks for the heads up! Didn't want to click through on my open plan office - or worse with my son sat next to me!

[seany]

Seems like stabot ( https://gitlab.com/juergens/stabbot ) is using that instance as some kind of intermediate store. So what ever is requested of it will get posted.

[savingGrace]

This was my first thought. With all of these YT alternatives I always end up asking who determines what content is saved/available? What if it doesn't go along with their beliefs or political stance? There's a fine line between going too far in each direction. e.g. China vs Pirate Bay

Edit: "a system where videos require manual approval by administrators before posting them" If you're seeing a ton of porn, then clearly the sysadmin's beliefs/views don't align with mine.

[detaro]

And the great thing is that you then can use an instance that has a sysadmin that filters better for your needs.

[craze3]

I believe the correct URL is https://peertube.social/ ?

[progval]

That's only an instance. Frontpage would be: https://joinpeertube.org/