It's a promising system, and I'd probably use it over a non-federated video hosting system if I wanted to run a video hosting site of some kind.
Yet it's currently hard to find a real usecase for it, since neither the content you want nor audience is there on PeerTube at the moment. If you're interested in open source software or data privacy you might find something here or there, but topics like gaming, music, sports or movies are very much underserved on the platform at the moment, and get almost no attention from viewers.
For example, I recently did a test search and found a let's play for the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The videos had something like 3-5 views on PeerTube, and about 10-15 times that on the creator's YouTube channel.
It's the same issue as on Mastodon and Lemmy to be honest, except exaggerated. If the majority of topics aren't well represented on these platforms, then the general public won't use them. And if the general public won't use them, then the creators that would bring the general public over won't use them either.
They need to figure out a way to encourage people outside of the 'hardcore tech nerd raised on Usenet' audience to use these platforms.
Has it normalized? When I first tried Lemmy it was mostly communists talking about communism. Then after some Reddit drama it seemed to be a bunch of people complaining about Reddit.
I generally like smaller sites, but those topics weren’t exactly engaging for me.
I am currently recording tutorial videos for an open source project. It's produced fully with Foss software (on Linux, obs, kdenlive) and about an open source project, so I wanted to host it with peertube (though YouTube might be used later on for its network effect, it was easier to publish with peertube as yt required an video of me and my ID).
It's going fine until now. I don't host peertube myself though, I use an existing instance, and embed the videos in the website.
It was a really good experience, so I'll continue that way.
Someone is still hosting the content and paying for resources just like with every other service distributed or not so it doesn't really add anything new to the equation.
1. Chunk one inside a YT video
2. Chunk two inside a TikTok video
3. Chunk three on an X thread
And then just post the manifest somewhere that can be read by a client, that then pulls the data in (video, doc, anything)
Obv, not meant for speed or good UX, but if we’re going down the route of decentralization, we can probably leverage social platforms to host chunks of data.
Last time I tried it the federation was whitelist based, that is you could only follow people on instances added by the admin of your instance. This made content discovery difficult.
I like the idea of all of these federated services but why does the UX always feel like an afterthought when it is the most important factor for adoption?
Same reason why the Linux desktop often suffers on the UX/UX front: people naturally drawn to these projects tend to lean heavily technical, and highly technical circles have a bad habit of driving out less technical contributors through devaluation of their work and lack of agency within the project among other issues.
That sort of work also tends to be less well-compensated than that of SWEs which makes it more important to be paid for work (which most FOSS project cannot do).
Youtube has been incredibly frustrating for many many reasons and is evidently evil in many axes now. We really need competition in video hosting.
It's a promising system, and I'd probably use it over a non-federated video hosting system if I wanted to run a video hosting site of some kind.
Yet it's currently hard to find a real usecase for it, since neither the content you want nor audience is there on PeerTube at the moment. If you're interested in open source software or data privacy you might find something here or there, but topics like gaming, music, sports or movies are very much underserved on the platform at the moment, and get almost no attention from viewers.
For example, I recently did a test search and found a let's play for the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The videos had something like 3-5 views on PeerTube, and about 10-15 times that on the creator's YouTube channel.
It's the same issue as on Mastodon and Lemmy to be honest, except exaggerated. If the majority of topics aren't well represented on these platforms, then the general public won't use them. And if the general public won't use them, then the creators that would bring the general public over won't use them either.
They need to figure out a way to encourage people outside of the 'hardcore tech nerd raised on Usenet' audience to use these platforms.
Lemmy is pretty ok actually. The lack of big user base is more of a feature than a bug.
Has it normalized? When I first tried Lemmy it was mostly communists talking about communism. Then after some Reddit drama it seemed to be a bunch of people complaining about Reddit.
I generally like smaller sites, but those topics weren’t exactly engaging for me.
I've found the same with Mastadon. It has a pre-eternal-September feel to it.
I am currently recording tutorial videos for an open source project. It's produced fully with Foss software (on Linux, obs, kdenlive) and about an open source project, so I wanted to host it with peertube (though YouTube might be used later on for its network effect, it was easier to publish with peertube as yt required an video of me and my ID). It's going fine until now. I don't host peertube myself though, I use an existing instance, and embed the videos in the website.
It was a really good experience, so I'll continue that way.
If you want to check out the videos: https://www.asfaload.com/videos/
Stupid question: when people inevitably use this for pirate content, and the feds try to shut the service down ... what's the plan?
The feds will go after the instance admin that is sharing pirate content.
Someone is still hosting the content and paying for resources just like with every other service distributed or not so it doesn't really add anything new to the equation.
With these kind of projects I think there are unfortunately social factors that impact their success as well as technical factors.
It's one thing to put a <video> element on a HTML page, it's quite another to make people actually watch it instead of their TikTok feed.
yeah video social media is way ahead with algorithms and content. I still think they need to exist and keep pushing for this idea
Random idea…
1. Chunk one inside a YT video 2. Chunk two inside a TikTok video 3. Chunk three on an X thread
And then just post the manifest somewhere that can be read by a client, that then pulls the data in (video, doc, anything)
Obv, not meant for speed or good UX, but if we’re going down the route of decentralization, we can probably leverage social platforms to host chunks of data.
Does it have good content? I explored it a bit in the past, but was a bit underwhelmed with content I could find there.
Edit: in the past
Last time I tried it the federation was whitelist based, that is you could only follow people on instances added by the admin of your instance. This made content discovery difficult.
I like the idea of all of these federated services but why does the UX always feel like an afterthought when it is the most important factor for adoption?
Same reason why the Linux desktop often suffers on the UX/UX front: people naturally drawn to these projects tend to lean heavily technical, and highly technical circles have a bad habit of driving out less technical contributors through devaluation of their work and lack of agency within the project among other issues.
That sort of work also tends to be less well-compensated than that of SWEs which makes it more important to be paid for work (which most FOSS project cannot do).
It is unfortunate that in french « peer » reads as « pire » which translates to « worse-tube »
It's developed by a french company, so that confusion can't be that critical.
Snarky lemma: In French, is the trend of things going worse to worse?
is it bulletproof ? I don't think peertube has fixed that massive legal liability to the "seeders"
same situation that bitorrent found itself in
My recent experience with PeerTube was to click on the OpenMW released video and the video didn't load. Is that a regular occurrence on PeerTube?
Does it allow streaming?
Docs:
https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use/create-upload-video#publis...
https://docs.joinpeertube.org/admin/configuration#live-strea...
I'm not affiliated with peertube...but yes it does enable/support streaming: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube#video-streaming-even-...
Yes. But a click on the link will provide a more detailed answer.
This does: https://safebots.github.io/Safecloud
I designed it in order to stream videos and get paid without worrying about getting deplatformed
Two weeks ago it was covered in a respected security publication: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/06/19/safecloud-browser...
It's coming out soon, but if you're adventurous, you can try it on GitHub already.
Edit: I posted it on HN right now as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48763565