[HN Gopher] PeerTube mobile app: discover videos while caring fo...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       PeerTube mobile app: discover videos while caring for your
       attention
        
       Android:
       https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.framasoft....
       iOS: https://apps.apple.com/fr/app/peertube/id6737834858  Repo:
       https://framagit.org/framasoft/peertube/mobile-application
        
       Author : toomuchtodo
       Score  : 282 points
       Date   : 2024-12-11 15:09 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (joinpeertube.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (joinpeertube.org)
        
       | facialwipe wrote:
       | At first I thought this was an app to discover content on
       | YouTube. Nope, it's a platform.
        
         | thal3s wrote:
         | It's the Fediverse version of YouTube using the ActivityPub
         | protocol just like Mastodon and Lemmy.
        
       | kuu wrote:
       | Not a single button to download the app on the landing page.
       | 
       | A lot of info about the company who made it, a lot of info about
       | how bad other actors are, and a lot about requesting funding, but
       | not a single video, neither how to explore the platform or
       | download anything.
       | 
       | I guess this is not made for users...
        
         | weberer wrote:
         | There are buttons for the Play Store and App Store halfway
         | down. Its under the heading: "A very first build, limited by
         | (play & i) stores"
        
           | theandrewbailey wrote:
           | That's 2/3rds down a very long page. Most people won't go
           | down that far unless they're quite interested in the
           | material.
        
             | aloisdg wrote:
             | You wont install an app if you are not interested in the
             | material
        
               | Goronmon wrote:
               | None of the apps I've installed in the past are because I
               | was invested in the developer's marketing materials.
        
               | atomicfiredoll wrote:
               | That's an assumption and not necessarily true. Some users
               | may read it, some may skim, some may come to the page
               | already convinced. For those latter groups, having a fast
               | lane/shortcut call-to-action visible someplace like the
               | top gives them a way to get started before they get
               | overwhelmed/distracted and potentially leave.
        
               | herval wrote:
               | that's the kind of attitude that makes otherwise
               | successful apps/content/etc created by stiff engineer
               | minds to never experience any success: "they didn't want
               | it anyway", when people literally didn't _understand_
               | what you were trying to sell.
        
           | wat10000 wrote:
           | But not on https://joinpeertube.org/, which seems pretty
           | important.
        
           | _ache_ wrote:
           | There is another one at the end.
        
           | derekdahmer wrote:
           | Even after reading this comment I went searching for the
           | button and it took a while to find it.
           | 
           | And the homepage says in bold letters "The PeerTube mobile
           | app for Android & iOS is out!" but it's not a link! There's a
           | link further down but it goes to this article where you then
           | have to scroll.
           | 
           | Not every site has to be super conversion optimized but it's
           | just common sense to put a CTA at the head of an
           | announcement. joinmastodon.org gets it!
        
         | aloisdg wrote:
         | There is one mid page and one at the bottom. Did you open the
         | link?
        
           | herval wrote:
           | it's a really confusing page. I couldn't find it either...
        
             | ncr100 wrote:
             | Makes me think about dopamine, seriously.
             | 
             | Many of the comments here on hacker News are talking about
             | how like difficult it is to find a linked download to get
             | the video so that you can watch the video so that you can
             | go lull and share meme videos about cats playing pianos and
             | what not. Dopamine junkies talk like this.
             | 
             | So perhaps there's a need for a dopamine specialist, or a
             | dopamine hit specialty in software development and product
             | management?
             | 
             | Certainly marketing exists but marketing has become such a
             | fuzzy wuzzy taboo subject and I think you know we'd like to
             | just inject it all straight into our veins ..
             | 
             | .. so how about making a role in open source projects
             | called the Dopamine Optimizer?
             | 
             | That way we could celebrate the intention, making a
             | delicious physically resonant software tool? Functionality
             | is a joy, for sure, there's an intellectual Joy to
             | programming, yes, but social acceptance and the delight
             | that comes from having our brain glands squirt out dopamine
             | is an underappreciated aspect of I think the work that a
             | lot of us may do.
        
               | herval wrote:
               | this is basic design 101. Well designed content works
               | better than badly designed content. If you want someone
               | to read your page and find the button, the onus of making
               | it readable is on you. And there's plenty of pretty basic
               | techniques to achieve that. No need to be a "dopamine
               | specialist".
        
         | jchw wrote:
         | I think that's mainly because PeerTube itself is software, not
         | a platform. It'd be like complaining "The Thunderbird website
         | doesn't show me how to get an e-mail account."
         | 
         | Granted, they can and should do a bit better here by giving
         | people who searched "PeerTube" some directions to go in
         | (including, clearly, adding app downloads.) That said, it's
         | somewhat understandable that it's not a focus: I reckon 9 times
         | out of 10 when someone finds PeerTube in the wild, it's from a
         | PeerTube instance itself. Besides that, having a _specific_
         | place to go defeats the purpose of federation somewhat.
        
           | _ache_ wrote:
           | Like, "joinpeertube" ? The first result if I type "Peertube"
           | on Google (I'm french, it may be different in USA).
           | 
           | https://joinpeertube.org/en_US
        
             | jchw wrote:
             | Checking again, I've made a realization: that's the same
             | landing page. Which does actually have the operative
             | information on it, but it's acting half as a landing page
             | for what PeerTube is and half as a call-to-action for where
             | to go. I think this is a bit disorienting: the two
             | different purposes should be split into different pages and
             | possibly even different websites in my opinion. It'd be
             | ideal if what you got as a user was a couple sentences
             | explaining what PeerTube is and then just an interface to
             | find an instance.
             | 
             | I also think a big CTA for "Download App" would be a good
             | addition to the credit of the root comment of this thread.
        
               | tpoacher wrote:
               | The top of the page has "What is Peertube * Browse
               | Content * Upload video"
               | 
               | I mean, it could be a bit more visible, I guess, but it's
               | not exactly invisible.
               | 
               | I get the point that maybe have browse content as the
               | main page ... but given that the point of peertube is the
               | network not the videoclient, the current page also makes
               | sense to me.
        
           | wat10000 wrote:
           | This is more like complaining that the Thunderbird web site
           | doesn't have links to download Thunderbird.
        
             | jchw wrote:
             | Thunderbird is a desktop app. PeerTube is software you
             | install on a server.
             | 
             | The app is just a client.
        
               | wat10000 wrote:
               | I don't understand. Thunderbird makes a client and has a
               | prominent download link for it. Peertube makes a client
               | and has no download link.
        
               | jchw wrote:
               | Thunderbird _is_ a client, and that 's all it is.
               | PeerTube is a lot of things, and that makes it hard to
               | have a single coherent landing page. I still agree with
               | putting the damn button on there realistically (please
               | note that I already agree to that in my first comment,
               | and no, I didn't edit it in after the fact), but if
               | anything I think they need more than one landing page in
               | either case.
        
           | immibis wrote:
           | That's why software loses to platforms. Platforms are
           | convenient, and software isn't. Businesses know this, but
           | open source developers don't really, and they don't have
           | money to commit to running platforms anyway. You couldn't
           | make a new email today with any degree of popularity - and
           | many attempts were made, from XMPP to Matrix to the
           | Fediverse.
        
             | jchw wrote:
             | The thing that leads to confusion is thinking about things
             | in terms of winning or losing, but open source devs rarely
             | actually care about what's most successful in the market.
             | At best, success in the market is merely a means to an end
             | for open source developers. The real goal of most open
             | source developers is merely to produce the software.
             | 
             | For some things, this actually is okay. Like for example,
             | market-wise, Discord has dominated online chat. Does anyone
             | still using XMPP or IRC care? Nope, because as long as
             | there are networks to chat on and more than one person the
             | network works. At worst, the main pain felt by market
             | dominance is that the rooms may be smaller than they could
             | be since people are less wont to join. But in practice, the
             | quantity often isn't that big of a problem. I had some of
             | my best conversations and met people I still know today in
             | an IRC chat that never had more than 50 users online at any
             | time and was inactive most hours of most days.
             | 
             | The market can do whatever it wants as far as I am
             | concerned.
        
               | immibis wrote:
               | I thought the point of free software was to change the
               | world somehow, not merely to prevent writing software
               | from becoming illegal.
        
               | jchw wrote:
               | Free Software as a movement started by Richard Stallman
               | and the FSF has inherent political and ideological goals.
               | 
               | Open Source was coined to contrast with this, and this
               | term was endorsed by a lot of people working on open
               | source software at that time, including Linus Torvalds.
               | 
               | So, the goal of open source software is not to change the
               | world. The goal of open source software is to produce
               | software that is open source. (The goals of "free
               | software" are out of scope.)
        
               | immibis wrote:
               | That's a worthless goal if not in service to something
               | else.
        
               | jchw wrote:
               | Most things are worthless if not in service of something
               | else. If you follow this line of thinking all the way to
               | the end, then you just come to the useless conclusion
               | that all life and everything we do is meaningless.
               | 
               | edit: This is not a very good response, it leaves too
               | much unsaid. I'm basically just trying to conclude that
               | most open source developers out there, at the very least,
               | the long tail of them, are just writing code and working
               | on things chiefly because they want to do so, with no
               | particular expectations of anything in return. That
               | doesn't mean they have zero goals or aspirations, but
               | they are not the primary reason to do the work. And even
               | without starting with such a goal, it doesn't mean
               | nothing can be achieved, as one can see from projects
               | like Linux, Krita, OBS and so forth. Clearly people don't
               | write software in a vacuum for literally no reason at
               | all, but OTOH whereas commercial software almost
               | certainly has the explicit goal of "succeeding in the
               | marketplace", there is no real inherent goal for open
               | source software, and many people work on it without a
               | stronger reason than "Because I want to."
        
         | jillyboel wrote:
         | It's a blogpost about the release of their app for peertube. If
         | you don't know what peertube is, just check their homepage...?
         | It's been around for a while.
        
           | engineer_22 wrote:
           | Even worse, there's no link to the app on the home page.
        
         | jeffbee wrote:
         | That is the fediverse disease. Boosters seem to believe that
         | people care about all this inside baseball stuff, when in fact
         | it is repulsive to normal people.
        
         | catapart wrote:
         | I've used PeerTube for years and it has always baffled me how
         | laughably bad its user experience is. Literally so bad that
         | I've never told someone about it without them immediately just
         | asking me stuff instead of getting the information - or even
         | better: videos that the person wanted to see - from the
         | website(s).
         | 
         | Maybe the mobile client is a step in the right direction? I can
         | hope! But the fact that I have to tell people "okay, so
         | sepiasearch is kind of like the youtube front page...ish?" is
         | already just infinitely dumb. Make a damn client whose name
         | indicates, in some way, that it's a video website. And then
         | shows some damn videos on the front page. Randomize them if you
         | really can't stand "algorithms", but honestly, just put some
         | videos on a page with "videos" in the url (or something
         | similar), and you can cut down on most of the confusion I've
         | seen.
         | 
         | Engineers get so lost up their own asses about this stuff
         | because they can't see that UX is entirely divorced from
         | functional processes. The user needs to do thing X, and the
         | computers can only provide processes Y, Z, etc; forcing the
         | user to reconcile with Y and Z just because they want X is the
         | definition of "programmer design". It's refusing to engage with
         | the very real ways in which users understand and interact with
         | services, for whatever sake the engineers want to make up ("I
         | don't like to obfuscate what is happening", "this is not
         | complicated. users should be able to understand", "it would
         | waste resources to provide a more streamlined experience", etc.
         | These are all terrible reasons to not bridge the interaction
         | gap between developers and users). Bluesky is my favorite
         | example of people abstracting away the complications of this
         | stuff. Yes, they had to centralize some parts to start with,
         | yes they had to compromise on features - but the damn thing is
         | instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with microblog social
         | media. That's all peertube has had to do for years now, and
         | they have just staunchly refused to do it.
         | 
         | Like I said, hopefully the mobile app is their first steps in
         | the right direction with this stuff. They've been doing the dev
         | stuff - made it work, made it fast, made it good! Now they just
         | need to do the user stuff - make it simple, make it familiar,
         | make it accessible.
        
           | api wrote:
           | > Engineers get so lost up their own asses about this stuff
           | because they can't see that UX is entirely divorced from
           | functional processes.
           | 
           | This is one of the main reasons that open source has never
           | penetrated beyond engineers, IT people, and computer
           | hobbyists.
           | 
           | The problem is that when you are good at using computers it's
           | not easy to see how unbelievably confusing they are to people
           | who are not good at using them.
           | 
           | The other is that there's no funding system to pay people to
           | do the not-fun parts of programming or to maintain the more
           | user-facing aspects of projects.
        
             | cosmic_cheese wrote:
             | The crazy thing is that in many cases there isn't even
             | really much novel work required to end up with a user-
             | friendly product. Devs can easily benefit from the vast
             | amounts of time and money put into UX research by simply
             | pattern-matching on the mountains of prior art now out
             | there. It's not like it's still the early 80s where
             | graphical UI is still in its infancy and there are no
             | examples to follow.
        
             | adra wrote:
             | I mean in reality, this is an excuse. We can and do build
             | good software for many and all people, but the bad ones
             | make it look like every engineer is out to lunch.
             | Counterpoint, it's rarely an incentive to OSS software
             | (individuals) to sit down with focus groups of early
             | adopters to gather valuable feedback that can help iron out
             | rough spots, so maybe a classic a little of A, a little of
             | B here.
        
             | godelski wrote:
             | > This is one of the main reasons that open source has
             | never penetrated beyond engineers, IT people, and computer
             | hobbyists.
             | 
             | This is also the reason there's so many multimillion dollar
             | businesses that are essentially front end interfaces to
             | open source projects. Hell, how many for ffmpeg alone?
             | > The other is that there's no funding system to pay people
             | to do the not-fun parts of programming or to maintain the
             | more user-facing aspects of projects.
             | 
             | I think there are plenty of people that make things looking
             | nice. I do, but I hate web. Maybe this is why TUIs are
             | taking off? But there definitely is a funding problem. My
             | partner is doing a PhD in economics and whenever I talk to
             | any of them about open source software, and how much of the
             | world is dependent upon it, they get very confused and it's
             | a lot of fun to see. I highly recommend (plus, I'd love to
             | see the actually thinking about these kinds of frameworks.
             | Clearly us devs haven't figured it out and it's worth
             | asking for outside viewpoints)
        
               | api wrote:
               | For a while at least Apple was the most valuable company
               | in the world, mostly on the back of caring a lot about
               | UI/UX. Under the hood it's just BSD and a bunch of
               | services and libraries.
        
               | abnercoimbre wrote:
               | Indeed. To this day, that's really all it is.
        
         | KoftaBob wrote:
         | It's amusing that the Mastodon creator is German, and PeerTube
         | French, as the user experience on Mastodon can feel strikingly
         | similar to dealing with the labyrinthine bureaucracy of
         | European regulations.
         | 
         | On Mastodon, the fragmented network of servers and the need to
         | grasp federation mechanics mirrors the intricate web of
         | European policies, where navigating localized laws and cross-
         | border harmonization can feel like wading through red tape.
         | 
         | Both present an ostensibly open and decentralized structure,
         | promising freedom and community-led participation, yet are
         | riddled with complexities that bewilder newcomers.
        
         | davepeck wrote:
         | Alas, this is par for the course in the Fediverse. Mastodon is
         | the only ActivityPub-using social network I'm aware of that has
         | broken away from this. (Maybe Lemmy, to some degree?)
         | 
         | Social networks that focus on people and user experience have a
         | shot. My hunch is those -- like PeerTube -- that focus on
         | technical, political, or philosophical motivations will always
         | be niche at best.
         | 
         | (Which is not to discourage experimentation! This seems to be a
         | fantastic moment to experiment with social media design.)
        
           | jonny_eh wrote:
           | > Mastodon is the only ActivityPub-using social network I'm
           | aware of that has broken away from this
           | 
           | I tried signing up for Mastodon a couple years back, and
           | failed somehow. Thankfully Threads and Bluesky are easier to
           | use. Hopefully Mastodon has improved, but I'm already using
           | two other competing micro-blogging platforms now.
        
             | davepeck wrote:
             | Yeah, absolutely. Despite its growth, IMHO Mastodon is
             | still a usability mess in the sense that a typical user
             | will find it needlessly complicated compared to _any_
             | alternative that is perceived as equivalent. The confusion
             | starts early, with onboarding. I think this is one of the
             | reasons why, for instance, Threads became a larger social
             | network in its first ~24 hours than Mastodon had in its
             | entire 6-ish year run to that point.
        
               | bagels wrote:
               | I was curious what the experience was like, having never
               | used Mastadon. I searched for "Mastadon Signup"
               | 
               | First page is a bunch of rules. I don't mind moderation
               | and decorum, but leading with that sends a signal to me
               | that the moderation is going to be even more capricious
               | than Reddit.
        
             | shafyy wrote:
             | How did you fail?
        
               | dyingkneepad wrote:
               | I'm not the person you're asking to, but I failed at the
               | "choose a server" part. I started having a bunch of
               | questions over the choice of server and then gave up from
               | analysis paralysis.
               | 
               | What are the implications of choosing one server over the
               | other? Does this affect search and discoverability in
               | between servers? If I really like Baking and really like
               | Fencing as well, should I join the "Matodon Baking"
               | server, the "Fencing fans" server of a neutral one? If I
               | choose the Fencing server, will the people on the Baking
               | server start seeing me as some sort of outsider since I'm
               | not originally from the Baking server? Will they even be
               | able to organically find me? How does the algorithm
               | evaluate these choices? Can I restrict/split my posts
               | between Baking, Fencing and general? And so on...
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | Right. They even have a nice picture of their SepiaSearch web
         | page, with a picture of the search box. But is it a live search
         | box? No. I have videos on PeerTube, and I never heard of
         | SepiaSearch.
         | 
         | PeerTube is a good way to host videos, but nobody will discover
         | them from PeerTube. I put technical videos there, which are
         | referenced in other forums. They play fine. Here's one.[1] I
         | get maybe a hundred plays. I just view PeerTube as something
         | like imgBB, a place to host content that you can't store on a
         | forum that doesn't handle images. Like HN.
         | 
         | PeerTube should be used more like WordPress - something lots of
         | sites run for their own videos. What PeerTube does is offload
         | playout to the browsers of others watching the same video at
         | the same time. This allows modest streaming servers to, at
         | least in theory, serve large numbers of users. I don't think
         | any PeerTube video has gone viral enough to test that scaling.
         | 
         | Note that this is not like BitTorrent. It's just caching and
         | streaming, not copy distribution. There's one master copy, and
         | peers only host copies while playing.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://video.hardlimit.com/w/349011f0-4029-4818-bc41-40fab2...
        
           | Tmpod wrote:
           | I was under the impression that you could permanently "seed"
           | videos for others, even if you're not the origin instance,
           | through WebTorrent or something along those lines. Fuzzy
           | memory tho
        
         | meiraleal wrote:
         | > I guess this is not made for users
         | 
         | The finesse of HN. If you don't do marketing like we preach,
         | you hate users.
        
         | GTP wrote:
         | The announcement has links, maybe they will add those to the
         | homepage later.
        
       | BadHumans wrote:
       | I like PeerTube and most of Framasoft's products but like most
       | federated software, I think they have a branding and marketing
       | problem that prevents them from growing any bigger. Mastodon did
       | as well and before they revised a lot of their site, no more
       | "toots" for example. I say this knowing that they say their goal
       | is education not growth but you need growth to reach the people
       | you want to educate.
        
         | kstrauser wrote:
         | Yeah, I had to go into my instance's locale files and fix them
         | to s/post/toot/ to put it back.
         | 
         | Some of Mastodon's upstream decisions strike me as "we must be
         | identical to Twitter in the insignificant ways if we want to
         | get users".
        
           | guerrilla wrote:
           | Even heavy Mastodon users thought the "toot" thing was dumb
           | though. It was the constant butt of jokes and a distraction.
           | I don't think it was about Twitter.
        
             | treyd wrote:
             | I still don't understand the objection to it. Yes I
             | understand the double entendre. But I'm also an adult and
             | mature enough to move onto more important things than
             | getting up in arms about a little fart joke.
        
               | warkdarrior wrote:
               | It is not a double entendre, since there is one common
               | meaning for "toot" and it is about bodily noises. "Toot"
               | has not been about posting on Mastodon up until very
               | recently.
        
               | kstrauser wrote:
               | Do they not have trumpets where you live? Did "tooting
               | one's own horn" imply breaking wind during the annual
               | performance review? Far and away the most common use of
               | "toot" is playing a note on a horn.
               | 
               | At one point, Gargron, the main guy behind Mastodon, even
               | mentioned using a trumpet as the basis of Mastodon's logo
               | branding: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/962
               | 
               | "Toot" _also_ has the double entendre. In all my life, I
               | 've never heard anyone outside a playground use it to
               | describe flatulence. In my personal experience, it's
               | almost always been about the musical notes. I'm not in a
               | band or otherwise around musicians more than the average
               | person, either.
        
           | corobo wrote:
           | Probably closer to "We don't want to be the network where
           | people's thoughts are called farts"
           | 
           | Similarly Bluesky did its best to get rid of "skeet" before
           | blowing up haha
        
       | weberer wrote:
       | Does anyone have any good recommendations of English language
       | tech channels on Peertube? Most of the recommendations I'm
       | getting by default look to be in French.
        
         | loonshi wrote:
         | https://videos.lukesmith.xyz/videos/recently-added
        
           | ncr100 wrote:
           | Thank you, really good content. Pleased to see that.
        
           | kouru225 wrote:
           | Man this guys media takes
        
         | corobo wrote:
         | If we're talking about the app: if you go to settings (top
         | right hamburger, then cog icon) you can set your language
         | preferences
         | 
         | I almost tripped over "welp this is all in French, I got
         | nothing to watch" too
        
       | aloisdg wrote:
       | Awesome. I am glad to see PeerTube growing. One of the most
       | serious alternative to the centralized YouTube hegemony.
        
         | xhkkffbf wrote:
         | I hate YouTube's algorithm. It keeps showing me the same videos
         | over and over.
        
           | _ache_ wrote:
           | May I recommend tournesol.app ?
           | 
           | It's again a French speaking initiative (but from a French-
           | Switzerland research collaboration) about creating a
           | recommendation algorithm with a lot of good properties and
           | that scale (check the research paper on arxiv.org :
           | 2107.07334).
           | 
           | It's also a plugin to help then have more data and to be
           | useful for the users (by having an other recommendation
           | algorithm on youtube), a win-win collaboration.
        
             | yorwba wrote:
             | Linkified:
             | 
             | https://tournesol.app/
             | 
             | https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.07334
        
           | redserk wrote:
           | And the algorithm seems to prioritize videos that have
           | extraordinarily lame and over-processed preview images and
           | comically dramatic titles.
           | 
           | I personally like the boring deep-dive technical videos. The
           | people uploading these videos don't seem to give a damn about
           | the latest hip SEO buzzwords to use (and, frankly, good) but
           | I have to go out of my way to hunt them down.
           | 
           | YouTube really, really likes shoving Mr. Beast, LTT, and
           | other channels at me, but I couldn't be any less interested,
           | and filter them out with an add-on.
           | 
           | I can't wait for a replacement platform for the boring
           | technical content. Until that platform exists, I recommend
           | looking at DeArrow. It at least fixes titles and preview
           | images.
        
             | sitkack wrote:
             | > filter them out with an add-on
             | 
             | Please do inform
        
           | ThrowawayTestr wrote:
           | Sorry, my fault. I'm one to rewatch videos a lot
        
           | elvircrn wrote:
           | I have a chrome extension that I made for myself which
           | removes recommended videos based on:
           | 
           | * channel/video title * duration * keywords * channel
           | size/video views
           | 
           | Then, I have a video queue where I add videos that I find
           | interesting.
           | 
           | Ever since I started using it, I started getting almost
           | exclusively videos that I enjoy consuming, since YouTube
           | seems to quickly adapt to my clicking patterns.
        
           | latexr wrote:
           | I reject all cookies from YouTube and browse without an
           | account. It's fantastic. There's no history, which they try
           | to make you feel bad about and paint as a negative, but
           | knowing what the front-page is I'm glad I don't have to see
           | any of that trash. Every time I open a video, the
           | recommendations are related to that specific video and not
           | past history. For the channels I care about, I subscribe via
           | RSS. Highly recommended.
        
           | orthecreedence wrote:
           | And the search is atrocious. It used to show you videos that
           | related to your search terms. Now it's like
           | 
           | [relevant]
           | 
           | [relevant]
           | 
           | [infinitesimally small divider ]
           | 
           | [irrelevant trash]
           | 
           | [irrelevant trash]
           | 
           | [irrelevant trash]
           | 
           | [irrelevant trash]
           | 
           | [irrelevant trash]
           | 
           | [infinitesimally small divider ]
           | 
           | [kind of relevant?]
           | 
           | [irrelevant but you watched it three months ago!]
           | 
           | [...]
        
       | subract wrote:
       | Big fan of what Framasoft is working on here. It's a shame to see
       | that (edit: iOS) App Store restrictions have prevented browsing
       | any instances not on a pre-blessed list. That all but eliminates
       | its usefulness to me as a self-hoster.
        
         | talldayo wrote:
         | It's another (tragic) example of why the App Store cannot
         | persist in a free market. It's sad, but Apple would prefer that
         | you download YouTube from their store instead of a healthy
         | alternative on your own terms. They have no qualms abusing
         | their double-standard for publishing when it hurts the little
         | guy, which is as monopolistic as monopoly abuse gets.
         | 
         | Europe got it right. Crush the App Store, and you kill every
         | maligned incentive with it. Only through natural competition
         | will Apple be forced to finally respect their users.
        
         | mihular wrote:
         | Wasn't that list optional, though?
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | There's a plus sign in the top right corner where you can
         | manually add the URL of any instance.
         | 
         | It'll work as long as the instance is sufficiently recent. My
         | instance is too old. Guess I have some motivation for upgrading
         | my PeerTube server to latest version now :D
        
       | thal3s wrote:
       | Contrast this with another story on the first page this morning:
       | "Google are deliberately breaking YouTube when it detects you're
       | running Firefox" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42388983).
       | 
       | Open-source content on the Fediverse will become more critical as
       | corporate oligarchs continue to exert their influence.
        
       | benatkin wrote:
       | How important is WebTorrent for PeerTube and how important is
       | WebRTC for WebTorrent? I get a feeling that if this takes off
       | browser vendors might try to change how WebRTC works to shut it
       | down. That would be another reason to support more open browsers
       | and more open operating systems. This app would help in that
       | scenario as well, as would a desktop app.
        
         | palata wrote:
         | I am not convinced that it would be possible. But anyway I
         | don't think they even care because virtually nobody uses
         | peertube.
        
       | ukuina wrote:
       | This page desperately needs a TL;DR and links to the apps above
       | the fold.
        
         | ncr100 wrote:
         | One could make joinpeertube2.org if you wanted to...freedoms
         | and all that. Hmm...
         | 
         | WAIT Peer Tube is trademarked.
         | 
         | So any add-on or fan domain name would have to disambiguate
         | itself from joinpeertube to something which is clearly
         | unaffiliated. I'm thinking, MacRumors or other sorts of mostly
         | obvious dances around the trademark word.
         | 
         | Amusingly I I generated several hypothetical domain names via
         | Chat GPT (another sidetrack: "Chad gpt" ...lol maybe for April
         | Fools) after explaining the situation and you know it cautioned
         | me of course do some follow-up checks but I think these are
         | funny And somewhat interesting:
         | 
         | TubeWithPeers.com PeerTubeGuide.com PeerVideoCommunity.com
         | ExplorePeerTube.com UsingPeerTube.com MyPeerTubeTools.com
         | 
         | So I think it is possible to invent a domain name which could
         | just cut to the chase and function as a faster better stronger
         | version of https://joinpeertube.org.
        
       | engineer_22 wrote:
       | How does PeerTube handle moderation? CSAM, racism, antisemitism,
       | etc
        
         | jeffbee wrote:
         | It doesn't. It also has no defenses against DoS attacks,
         | intentional or inadvertent. It is the perfect software for
         | people with no experience distributing videos.
        
           | pkkkzip wrote:
           | this would be a major hinderance to widespread adoption. DoS
           | attacks aside the fact that it has no legal liability offset
           | for video hoster (which anybody watching the video ends up
           | sort of like bitorrent)
        
         | emaro wrote:
         | PeerTube is federated and moderation is each server's own
         | responsibility.
        
         | stiltzkin wrote:
         | It works like forums, you need to look for an instance with the
         | culture and moderation of your liking.
        
       | yreg wrote:
       | Is there a specific App Store rule that prevents them to let
       | users add custom streams?
       | 
       | It sounds functionally the same as adding instances to a Mastodon
       | client or RSS feeds into a Podcast app. What's the catch?
        
       | tosser2084 wrote:
       | no way to use from desktop? Absurd.
        
         | do_not_redeem wrote:
         | HN users are the most demanding group of people I've ever
         | encountered in my short time on this blue sphere.
         | 
         | Use a browser.
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | To be fair, most people will just bounce. Feedback can be an
           | opportunity to improve.
           | 
           | It would be nice if the feedback remembered that there are
           | humans on the other side of the line, but sometimes you take
           | what you can get.
        
         | Zak wrote:
         | Peertube has existed as web-based software for years; this post
         | is about the addition of a mobile app. The linked project page
         | has a search from the big "browse content" link at the top and
         | a list of servers running Peertube, such as https://fedi.video.
         | 
         | For onboarding a general audience, this project page is not
         | ideal.
        
       | sitkack wrote:
       | All the words on the site should be explained IN A VIDEO. Every
       | page should HAVE VIDEO ON IT.
        
       | skratlo wrote:
       | This will never take off with that awful logo and mascot, and
       | general silliness. With the "developed by Framasoft", like who
       | the f* cares. It's noise, it looks awful, it repels potential
       | users. Get some serious marketing person in.
        
       | tpoacher wrote:
       | I have some feedback if anyone from PeerTube is reading. The
       | https://joinpeertube.org/instances page should have some more
       | useful sorting for the instances it shows. (not to mention the
       | ability to sort by something useful)
       | 
       | E.g. in my page as I see it, there's a random channel with 20
       | videos appearing as the second instance result, and then the 6th
       | result is Freediverse.com with 741 subscriptions and 465,094
       | videos. Surely the latter should be on top.
        
       | minroot wrote:
       | Using Revanced YouTube greatly improved yt experience, and for
       | some reason yt is suggesting a lot of small channel with great
       | videos
        
       | kouru225 wrote:
       | So downloading the app and adding my interests my first 10
       | recommendations are: 1) An educational video about peertube
       | itself by peertube 2) the same educational video about peertube
       | by peertube with English subtitles 3) a slideshow presentation
       | about Framadate in French by framadate 4) an educational video
       | about the fediverse by peertube 5) another educational video
       | about peertube by peertube but this time in French 6) a French
       | video about the pyramids I think? 7) the same educational video
       | about peertube by peertube with Spanish subtitles 8) an
       | educational video about mastodon 9) an educational video about
       | alternative medicine 10) and educational video about TILvids by
       | TILvids
       | 
       | I don't speak French fyi. Also it doesn't change what videos I
       | see when I filter by my interests.
       | 
       | Methinks this is not a viable competitor to YouTube.
        
         | m348e912 wrote:
         | It seems like the streaming tech is solid, no issues loading
         | and playing videos. Curation on the other hand seems to be
         | abysmal. I even tried their cutely branded search engine
         | SepiaSearch with similar non-relevant or not so interesting
         | results.
         | 
         | I am also curious how moderation works. How do they prevent
         | inappropriate or illegal content from being shared?
        
         | quinncom wrote:
         | I get exactly the same list of videos when sorting by Most
         | Views. It seems the algo doesn't consider interests.
        
       | sschueller wrote:
       | I created a Peertube client for android a few years ago. It was
       | removed by Google in September and is still pending appeal:
       | https://github.com/sschueller/peertube-android/issues/302
       | 
       | I hope this version doesn't receive the same fate as mine did.
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | There are many more options than the Play store for Android.
         | F-droid, Obtainium, etc. Could you list in some of those?
         | 
         | EDIT: Oh, you do, nice!
        
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       | eafkuor wrote:
       | Serious question, why would I use this? I searched for a topic
       | I'm interested in, in English, and got barely related results in
       | various languages (Swedish, Spanish).
       | 
       | On YouTube, the first result for the same search is an amazing
       | playlist, in English, on the exact topic I searched for.
        
       | vfclists wrote:
       | Peertube is fine.
       | 
       | It just needs more AI, the solution for all software and platform
       | problems _du jour_
        
       | stevage wrote:
       | > We cannot stress enough how their stores are not ready for
       | independent solidarity-oriented networks. For exemple, a small
       | "support us" donation link in our website footer or even on one
       | of the allowed platforms triggered a "nope" from Apple.
       | 
       | Ugh, wow.
        
       | danlitt wrote:
       | Deleting YouTube and replacing it with this. I hope it pans out!
        
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       (page generated 2024-12-11 23:00 UTC)