PeerTube is fantastic with its decentralized model that prioritizes user privacy and control. However, it still struggles to gain widespread popularity.
What do you think could be done to enhance PeerTube’s appeal and functionality, possibly even becoming a serious alternative to YouTube?
people see “alternative” and think “competition,” when they should consider it as “coexistance.” so either some youtubers would have to also upload to peertube as an additional option in case of site maintenance and other such trouble, or people on peertube could upload to youtube a week or so later and as part of their end credits/description/whatever, say that viewers can see this content one week early on peertube. It wouldn’t be THE fix for peertube, but more like the first step in a series of ever-increasing tweaks that could lead to this theoretical fix.
Of course, this is based on old practices such as “In theaters Friday, but you can see Thursday at Midnight” and other such strange ad campaigns, so the idea may not be entirely transferable. But that shouldn’t mean someone shouldn’t at least try that and see what happens.
What I’m about to say is probably dumb but… I think it wouldn’t be really possible for PeerTube to become a serious alternative to YouTube, because of decentralization.
Like, sure, that may be a good thing in certain cases - we’re literally on Lemmy - but I want to be able to access content from most PeerTube instances using one singular instance, which isn’t really possible with PeerTube. As a result, the majority of instances feel dead.
I think what we need is an open-source and centralized alternative to YouTube (if that doesn’t already exist), but I might be missing something.
There are currently two main reasons I don’t use PeerTube:
- Videos have inconsistent playback performance.
- It’s pretty confusing and difficult to use if you are just looking for an experience similar to YouTube.
If they can find a way to make playback performance consistent and make the entire experience better, then I’d consider using it. But, I already use YouTube alternatives like Odysee and Rumble, so I don’t know how much I’d end up actually using PeerTube.
