Like others have said, it’s way more resource intensive than text based systems. Even discounting higher res vids, if you go to any random larger YT channel and download all their videos in 144p 480p and 720p it’ll be quite a lot larger than you might expect. Sure, if you’re serious about it you could get an array of hard drives and a small server, but you’re talking hundreds of bucks and lots of upkeep. Outsource it to a VPS and AWS buckets and you’ve still got upkeep but now you’ve added an extra 0 to your bill.

There’s not enough charitable nerds on the internet to host even a fraction of 1% of Youtube. It’s even worse if self hosting instances is pushed. Even as a fellow tech nerd, no way I’m hosting my own instance just so I can share a video once in a blue moon. Something that always gets my goat in fediverse discourse is when people always jump to saying something along the lines of “just host your own” then wonder why AP went from ~2.5M users to 0.8M users.

There’s also some Fediverse specific issues that hold back a more mainstream audience. There’s some fringe political stuff on both sides of the isle which can pretty easily scare off people, and defederation combined with peertube’s more siloed approach makes discovery near nil. (can’t see content from remote peertube instances unless somebody has already subscribed to that channel on the remote instance from your local instance AFAIK).

Then there’s the new platform (or in this case many platforms connected via one protocol) issues. Lack of users, limited/no monetization, limited development/support, and very few pros + a lot of cons at first glance from somebody who doesn’t consider tech a hobby and is comparing it to established platforms.

Edit: Can’t remember who, but iirc a peertube user I follow who regularly deletes their videos because their host doesn’t give them too much space. It’s great for a less big tech way to see their latest videos, but not acceptable if anyone’s gonna bill something like that as the next big video platform.

Running an actively used Peertube instance is a lot more expensive than, for example, a Lemmy instance. Videos take up a lot more storage than text. Not only that, the videos also need to be processed and then served. Who will keep paying for the monthly server bills?

Then there’s monetization. Most YouTube creators are there because they make a living out of YouTube. There is no such thing on PeerTube. They would need to solely rely on donations.

The ideal PeerTube network would be where every somewhat big content creator ran their own instance and maybe a few general instances for smaller content creators that are regularly donated to.

If YouTube ever gets killed by Google, don’t expect many people to come here.

It’s not about adoption. It’s about money.

Superfamousguy (a youtube user I just ficticiously created to represent every single big name youtuber) doesn’t make videos in their room talking about whatever, and uploads whenever.

These guys have a strict schedule. They need to shoot today. Edit tonight, upload tomorrow exactly at 11am. Because their users are conditioned to expect those videos at those times. So they get sponsored, and now advertisers are promised an average viewcount on the dominant video platform at a certain time. They’re paying superfamousguy money for those promises.

It’s not a hobby, it’s a job. And advertisers are not going to be willing to touch peertube because it’s handled by so many fragmented cases that it’s impossible for peertube to have the stability of youtube.

So, I’m not saying peertube can’t grow. I’m just saying its decentralized nature will scare most advertisers away. Without the advertisers, superfamousguy can’t make a living. And at that point it doesn’t matter if peertube has twice as many viewers as youtube. Without money, these professionals cant fund their crew, they can’t make videos, and thus stick to youtube.

I never heard that. I also think Peertube is doing great. And development has been constant, we get new features all the times, for years now.

I hope to see people like Lewis Rossmann erc. Start posting there

I personally see Peertube as something that’d be better as a small-scale, reasonably low-key way of storing and sharing videos if you’re not interested in monetization or views. For example, documentation for a passion project.

For everything else, a different form of decentralization makes more sense, such as Odysee (though we’ll see how the Arweave migration goes).

The sustainability argument stems from technological constraints. YouTube as a company has no problem sustaining millions of dollars in server infrastructure to serve media. Most self-hosters wouldn’t be able to do that without significant income.

I don’t agree with this perspective but also don’t know enough about server infrastructure or video streaming to argue against it.

‘shure’ is a misspelling I have never encountered.

I consider two things to think Peertube not being sustainable isn’t the case.

First, the noise caused bad actors / professional fearmongerers, and people too used to Youtube or that think any social medias would skyrocket in the first month of service, may make people think it’s a far more prevalent opinion.

Second, platforms such as Peertube may cather to any movements, be them cultural, political, for business, and so on, while also, due to being based on instances, it much harder to be taken over.

Those two together make me see the project as having great potential, a potential that some may fear intentionally or otherwise.

And on a side note, “the new mobile app” reminds me, anyone could potentially make programs for it, or even integrate Peertube to their own. Another reason for it being able to cather to way more people, I think, as then programs could be made to interests and needs otherwise not found.

Does peertube actually host anything or is it just a frontend? All I’ve ever seen people linking to it are videos from YouTube, using PeerTube (and a couple other YT alternatives) as the interface.

Yep not sustainable. Think of how much diak space YouTube is using. Just was reading this morning how peertube instances limit new users and that’s ok. If everyone can’t upload videos it we’ll never replace YouTube.

Unfortunately, I have zero faith in the team behind it. Unless the team changes, I doubt that peertube will ever become what it wants/needs to be.