Does Peertube not have federation or similar? This will never take off if users have to visit dozens of different instances each specifically for one interest of theirs.

> extremely niche

Personally, I feel we're slowly moving beyond the mindset that one tool or service needs to "rule them all". I was recently very pleased to discover several online events I took part in were powered by PeerTube, and it just worked.

If an organization is looking to host a stream or offer virtual attendance of sorts, it feels like a no-brainer to pick something like PeerTube and avoid the data/algorithm behemoths.

Well, it is very easy to get video demonetized on YT, it is enough to use one of the forbidden words, like Israel. Another thing are shadowbans. I see more and more people are trying to have side channel for the monetization, like Patreon.

As an everyday person, you can continue to use YouTube to discover and consume content.

It's more like, if you find a maker of content that you like, they might happen to have a PeerTube or other independent YouTube-like site up as well, as a backup or larger archive of their material.

The independently hosted FOSS alternatives are more for people who create content and don't want to or can't depend on the good graces of bigtech to indefinitely host their content for whatever reason (usually a practical matter, sometimes even underlying political factors).

For instance, YouTube will scan new content automatically and zap the channel if it says the wrong couple words more than a few times.

Maybe that's not a problem for a lot of channels. But there were definitely tons of creators who got burned by that kind of cancelling over the last n years.

So I imagine, yes, some entrepreneurial, technical, and communication-oriented folks would be interested in things like PeerTube, YouPHPTube (which is actually quite good) [1], etc.

[1] https://youphp.tube

It hasn't succeeded yet, so therefore we should stop talking about it? I never understood this line of thinking. Some new inferior but better hyped variant, like Bluesky to Mastodon? Yes, the better technology doesn't always win out, but should we make that a self-fulfilling prophecy by pre-emptively abandoning something?

The value in YouTube is their monetization network which brings real money to the people uploading videos through advetising deals and the premium subscription. This is why YT became such a juggernaut - it's not just covering its tech costs, its also providing folks with real revenue to create those videos.

And this is where Peertube isn't really the same kind of a platform so you won't see the same kind of videos.

> I really want this project to succeed but it’s been many years and basically no one has heard of it

It's about authorship, not the tool.

I hope non-profit and academia would embrace peertube.

I think it’s worth remember that at any time a service like YouTube can do something that like everyone off. It hasn’t happened yet, but when it happens, people will need a place to go to. Now imagine if people start thinking about it only after the enshittification get so bad that getting an usable alarmeis would take years.

[dead]

They already did, users are leaving in masses, AI content is dominating youtube to cover losses, youtube is the new blockbuster:)