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?

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[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 111 points 10 months ago (3 children)

It's both horrible discovery and a limited number of creators.

But, for discoverability, https://sepiasearch.org/ might help you find things to watch, since it's the only good multi-server search I've seen. (And run by the peertube devs.)

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 54 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I say this everytime someone talks about peertube. You should not need to leave the website to use the website. If I search "crazy guy uses rake to play football", and it's not in the results page, I'm not going to go to ANOTHER website, to search THIS website, for a guy who doesn't understand how to play sports.

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yeah, I agree.

When it comes to building a fediverse service there's a really delicate balance to find with making it unambiguous you're engaging with multiple services, vs creating a singular and cohesive enough user experience, and it seems like the peertube devs just learn reaaally far towards the former at the expense of the latter.

Its a bit frustrating.

Edit: I learned from another user on this thread that sepia search can be enabled by an instance as their search functionality. That definitely helps

[–] commander@lemmings.world 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I completely agree.

Normally, you wouldn't have to do this. The problem is that Peertube devs made the HORRIBLE decision to make federating "opt-in" only. This means most content isn't available on most instances. It's a snowball effect where most owners make the decision without thinking to have some mystical barrier to enter their esteemed federation.

They don't understand that most users don't give a shit about "proving" themselves to enter some random person's instance. (and rightfully so)

Peertube made a lot of good choices, but a lot of bad ones too by the censorship/walled garden crowd.

Hopefully someone with more resources than me can run an instance that fills this void: just let people upload and interact like youtube back in the early 2000s.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

just let people upload and interact like youtube back in the early 2000s.

Quick! Somebody get a baby named charlie to bite me! He could bite my finger!

That kids in college now. Yeah. Feel old now, don't ya?

[–] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 2 points 10 months ago

Implying I didn't feel old then, lmao

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The thing is, there may be content that people will find on Sepia search that you DO NOT want on your instance.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you mean hosted on your instance, that you own, can you not delete content?

If you mean you join an instance, and it has this content on it, well then you picked the wrong instance.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 10 months ago

If you mean hosted on your instance, that you own, can you not delete content?

You can. At which point it would be unsearchable.

If you mean you join an instance, and it has this content on it, well then you picked the wrong instance.

You're thinking of this as a viewer and not a host.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It's both horrible discovery and a limited number of creators.

100%. I created my own instance and set it to auto-follow other instances. There's like 975 or something and still not really much interesting. Can confirm TILVids also denied my federation request.

I'm doing my part by uploading my own videos 🙂

If I set it the discovery to "trending" the top video is 2 years old 🤷

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sort by "hot". And also, check this list out for content: https://lemmy.wtf/post/15810205

Also also, you can still follow channels on tilvids.com, from your own instance, by following the channel's handle.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If I go to the TILvids channels, the last 6 months of videos are missing.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Do you have an example?

If I go to The Linux Experiment via peertube.wtf, I can see many years of videos.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

From what instance is that?

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Mine

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What’s the URL?

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not sharing, thanks Guy on a Buffalo.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No problem. Something is off with the federation on your server though.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 0 points 10 months ago

I run various services just to toy around with and pretty much all of them have some form of broken federation. Some more severe than others. It's pretty off-putting.

[–] andrew_s@piefed.social 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That view of The Linux Experiment is quite similar to the view from lemmy.ml, with the latest post also being from 9 months ago. I wonder if your PeerTube instance and Lemmy 0.19.x have the same problem, where "something changed" at PeerTube, and new videos stopped appearing at federated sites that didn't change to accommodate the update. Are you running an old PeerTube version?

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 0 points 10 months ago

Nope

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 9 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Sepia Search is something that's also build into PeerTube, if the admin have enabled Global Search. Sepia Search uses this list of instances: https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances

The same can be enabled in PeerTube. You can see here, that I have it enabled on my instance:

[–] Jerry@feddit.online 3 points 10 months ago

I'm so glad you pointed this out. I did not have this enabled on mine and I forgot about this option completely. I just enabled it.

[–] ellyxir@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 10 months ago

i found sepia search to be very good! i noticed the ios peertube app seems to have integrated it so a lot more videos are discoverable. @ellyxir@humanwords.cc

[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 2 points 10 months ago

Ah cool. I never noticed that option, but that certainly improves things.

That should probably either be default or a thing asked on setup since I'd wager most people probably actually do want that.