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?

    • farcaster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      7·
      3 months ago

      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.

    • roofuskit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      3 months ago

      Which is silly because most instances will auto mirror your YouTube channel. Literally takes no effort to post to both.

  • rocky1138@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    3 months ago

    It’s really just missing a great instance. Most of them look really shady or are not accepting new users.

  • roofuskit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    I couldn’t even get an account on the instance I most wanted because they seem to only give accounts to creators. So now I cannot follow anyone on that instance, or like their videos, or comment. So I have to figure out what other instance I can get an account on and follow from there, hoping they federated with each other.

    • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      they seem to only give accounts to creators

      Yea this is a bit silly. It seems like they manually approve user accounts because they need to be careful with the uploads using up their storage. But a way better solution would be to approve users more liberally, and user accounts would be created without a channel so they cannot upload anything, and creating channels needs to be approved. That way people can freely make user accounts for browsing/following, and the admins can still restrict spam channels from being created and uploading videos.

      • roofuskit@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        Exactly. The way it is structured seems to forget people who watch the videos are an important part of the community.

  • mesamunefire@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    Yeah the search is the worst part. As others have said the technology is there, we just need a better search.

    The other issue is Lemmy (and perhaps other platforms) has issues with Peertube channels. I can’t direct link Peertube for activityhub posts. Lemmy is a no go. !teddy_the_dog@piped.chrisco.me Piefed for example works: https://piefed.social/c/teddy_the_dog@piped.chrisco.me

    I host one and don’t plan on taking it down anytime soon! If anyone likes dog videos: @teddy_the_dog@piped.chrisco.me

    He’s a good boy.