idk how to have cross platform interactions.
Also, every peertube instance feeks very specific for my needs, am I supposed to just post the content on different instances? And even then what instance could I log in to? For example where would a viewer log in? I am not planning to only view content but still! Besides, does the instsnce I log in to could affect the communication speed with others? (I know they can like block eachother.) Anyways thanks a lot!
One thing that took me a looong time to realize is that Peertube federates weirdly - it’s all under control of the instance admin, not it’s users. Admins decide which instances federate with each other and then all the videos are copied between instances that have agreed to federate with each other.
But there’s no way to see this in the UI, as an ordinary user!
So it’s all super fragmented. Discoverability is atrocious, even by fediverse standards.
If you look at https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances?sort=-totalInstanceFollowers then that’ll help you find a well-connected instance. Then post onto that one.
I think there are 2 levels here: basic federation, where you can follow a channel on another instance and comment there, is opt-out like the rest of the fediverse. In fact you can even comment from Mastodon. The platform-level following is another thing, that enables other uses.
The issue of search is unrelated to that, it’s the same as with other fediverse platforms: search only searches on the current platform. But peertube also allows you to search on global indexes:
https://docs.joinpeertube.org/use/search#global-search
And, of course, you can use Sepia Search, a curated index of instances by the people behind peertube:
https://sepiasearch.org/
Apologies if I’m misunderstanding, but isn’t this true as also for Lemmy, Mastodon, and the Fediverse in general?
Not in the same way, no.
Most of the fediverse is open to all by default and the control admins have is to create a block list of instances they’d rather not federate with. With Peertube it doesn’t federate with anyone until admins on both sides add each other to an allowlist.
This is probably cause Videos use a lot of space. If suddenly there is a new instance and yours just starts downloading from there risks running out of storage or incriminating yourself by downloading illegal material.
I can see why they federate differently.
Now I understand, cheers. That’s a huge difference!