[jesse_dot_id]

Yeah, it's pretty simple. When I go to YouTube.com, I have access to all of the videos on that platform, sorted based on what I'm subscribed to and other things like what I watch. The first thing I see are videos. I'm off to the races.

When I go to https://joinpeertube.org, I'm met with a double hero section that tells me about PeerTube, which is ultimately meaningless to 99% of the population.

When I get to actual content on that page, it's not an aggregate of all of the most popular videos across the federation, it's a description of the types of videos you can find on federated sites with links to the sites and not video embeds. You're telling me on the front page that I have to do legwork to find the videos I want to watch. You're already not competitive. You already lose.

Creators go where users go. If you don't build the platform to attract users, you will not get the volume of content that is required to hold people's attention. There's a reason why people come to YouTube, Reddit, Hacker News, Reels, etc. There are almost no clicks between the user and the content, and the content is plentiful.

Every time I try to use PeerTube, I have to try to find where to find the videos. As someone who's been chronically online since 1995, it's not that big of a deal. I can find them eventually. But that UX sucks, even for me, so it's probably utterly untenable for the vast majority of casual users.

You are trying to compete with slot machines by inventing a machine that makes the user read a bunch of stuff between each pull of the lever. It's not super difficult to see why that is a competitive disadvantage.

[underlipton]

And the thing is that you don't even necessarily need to make a new slot machine to compete with the old slot machine. A lot of people hate the slot machine-ness of the old slot machine. They hit a button on their Chrome extension/Greasemonkey remote to turn off the flashing lights and loud attention-grabbing sounds and whatnot. So, if your new machine doesn't have those, maybe that's all for the better. Maybe your new machine gives players more control over how they play, and doesn't try to trick them into never getting up to get some water or go to the bathroom or whatever. Maybe there's no jackpot, just a chill or educational time. Maybe you get rid of the randomness of the outcomes, so that it's easier for people to just find what they're looking for. I dunno. There are a lot of ways it could go.

But, boy, I do know this: when I sit down, I better be able to just pull the lever and start.

[ndriscoll]

This is like complaining that when you go to nginx.org, you aren't shown a bunch of websites or a search box to discover anything, so this web thing is garbage UX compared to the Facebook app. There's no "the federation". There are various sites that run peertube, some of which are federated with each other. Others have nothing to do with each other. Some are probably completely private.

An example of federation might be that a bunch of universities run their own instances where they post colloquia, and they federate with each other to make it easy to subscribe to departments in your field from another university, or to comment on their videos. IMO state universities should be posting their material online like this, and on a platform that does not require the public to watch ads (something fundamentally against the mission of an educational institution), or agree to some random company's terms.

[jesse_dot_id]

I agree with you, but I was speaking to PeerTube's own claim that it is an alternative to YouTube, rather than the narrow use case you're describing. For the vast majority of the people on the planet, it is not an alternative to YouTube because it's very difficult to discover content. When I go to YouTube, I can find videos immediately. If I want to find videos via PeerTube, it's a journey. It's the same journey that has shifted the majority of Internet users away from forums to aggregators. PeerTube feels like a bygone way to do things.

[ndriscoll]

> An alternative to Big Tech's video platforms

> PeerTube is a tool for sharing online videos developed by Framasoft, a french non-profit.

> PeerTube allows you to create your own video platform, in complete independence.

I think it's pretty clear that it's software for running your own video sharing platform? Sure, people are used to monopolies and consolidation now, but surely you can wrap you head around the idea that some people might want to host their own site? Like why are you here and not on reddit? Is this site a bygone way to do things? Or is it just... its own thing?

As I said above, I think entities tied to governments should be using something like this, not youtube. The obvious place to look for e.g. recorded meetings from your city would be your city website. Likewise with schools. And government functions like that absolutely should not be monetized and should not have ads attached.

[jesse_dot_id]

I am both here, and on Reddit, and also on YouTube. I can be in many places at the same time because this is all made of light and there are lots of interesting places to go. I'll probably find myself on Reels before too long. I'm not on PeerTube because I cannot find content that is interesting on PeerTube, which again is the crux of my argument.

https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube

> PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform developed as an alternative to other platforms that centralize our data and attention, such as YouTube, Dailymotion or Vimeo.

The original PeerTube launch I saw on this platform several years ago very much sold it as a replacement for YouTube. I'm not sure what exactly you think I'm saying or trying to do here, but what I've said has absolutely nothing to do with the use case you're defending. It's a good use case and it makes sense. It's fine for hosting your own stuff or in coursework or something where the videos are directly linked to from a CMS. Some people want to host their own stuff. Some people should host their own stuff.

For everybody else... The UX sucks.

[ndriscoll]

You are not "on peertube" because there's no such thing as a peertube to be on. What I'm trying to convey is that your words literally don't make sense. There is no "everybody else" for the UX to suck for. You're complaining that it doesn't try to be the opposite of what it is.

If you're interested in Debian, you go to Debian's peertube which is part of Debian's website, where the Debian foundation hosts their videos. If you're interested in Blender, you go to Blender's peertube which is part of Blender's website. It's always worked this way. There's also activitypub federation if you want the social parts with a single account so that cooperating instances can interact. Like email, it's an open protocol so any servers can federate. Like email, they can also choose who they accept traffic from.

There is also a search engine that indexes a bunch of instances, but just as Google is not the web, their search engine is not the peertube. "The web" is just the sum total of all of the websites out there. The thing you seem to think has bad UX, the peertube, is just the sum total of all of the peertube instances out there.

There's no giant overlay or mesh network like gnutella or IPFS. There's just people running their own servers, like the web or email.

It's an alternative to youtube for people who just want to share videos in the same way that an email server is an alternative to gmail for people who just want to send emails to each other. Or a web server is an alternative to Facebook for someone who wants a website. It's understood that those monopolies are then distinct and generally incompatible.

[jesse_dot_id]

You're being pedantic while also just kind of continuing to make my point for me because you're describing a regressive user experience over and over again. The Internet at large has evolved beyond forums and IRC for a reason.

Users have become used to having quick and easy access to a lake of content. When I go to PeerTube's website, I should see content first, and if I'm a creator, I want a guarantee that my content isn't going to suddenly disappear. YouTube can make these guarantees. BlueSky is the only such federated alternative that has gained any degree of traction with normal users because they ripped off the UX of Twitter verbatim.

If you're on episcodon.net and you want your friends and colleagues to join you there, what does that look like? Your answer invariably resides at the end of a labyrinth of shit UX, including the legwork you have to do first to know wtf episcodon.net even is.

People use GMail because it makes email easy to use and there is an implicit guarantee that the emails they have access to today will be there in 10 years because there are an army of engineers being paid to maintain the service. The UX is good and that's why it's popular.

To advertise yourself as an alternative to a popular social media platform, you must address why those platforms are popular in the first place or you are not competitive as a default state.

[zanderwohl]

That's fine if that's your goal, but don't expect anyone to adopt it then. 99% of people aren't flocking to video platforms for ideological nor technical reasons.

[ssl-3]

I tried to find some videos by starting at the URL you linked.

I clicked on "Browse content", because that's exactly what I wanted to do: I wanted to browse content.

All I got from that was a needless introduction to an entirely unnecessary cuttlefish named Sepia, and a search box. There was no content to browse; I was lied to.

But there's a note at the bottom about "Peertube instances" with a literal "CLICK >HERE<" cursed-abomination-style link.

That click lead to a list of... 25 "Peertube platforms", in one column on the right, even though I clicked >HERE< for "Peertube instances".

There's a written suggestion that I can add filters to find more of these, but that's exactly the opposite of the way that filters have always worked in my world: Filters are reductive, not additive.

Finally, in the left-hand column, is another CLICK >HERE< style link that is supposed to take me to "videos or channels" -- you know, the stuff I'm looking for.

That link brings me back to the stupid page with Sepia, the iconic cuttlefish, and a search box.

Having been lied to twice (thrice?), I gave up. At this time, I have not yet seen any videos.