I think it's just a misunderstanding. With most other Fedi software, servers federate via the users themselves following content from other servers and then the admins have control over whether to sever that connection by defederating. With PeerTube it doesn't work that way, federation is controlled by the admin of each server in the first place and they tend to keep the list quite short (on a particular theme, or just servers by other admins they trust, or whatever).

I expect the fundamental reasons for that are the expense of hosting video content and also the risk of extremely NSFL material if you throw the doors open by default. It definitely results in a lot of behaviours that seem very strange if you're used to the usual fedi way of doing things.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You can follow other instances in peertube as user, but it's not straight forward. You have to copy-paste the link of the user, video, or channel in the search bar, then follow. It's a bizarre way of doing things and mastodon has something similar too.

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[–] thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes you can follow channels from other servers without much of a problem. The issue that this on something like Lemmy or Mastodon, that follow would then bring the followed content into the search results of your server. It doesn't seem to work that way on PT.

Example: I have two channels on makertube.net. My husband follows them both, from another PT server (I can't remember which). But just the act of him following doesn't mean my channel shows up in a search from his server.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 0 points 8 months ago

That's unfortunate. However, to say "they don't federate" is still fake news. They do, just not like Mastodon does.

Is there a feature request for PT to rectify this?

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[–] Shkshkshk@dice.camp 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

@onlinepersona @thegiddystitcher that's actually what I am doing. I found I can just follow all these peertube users from Mastodon, so that's what I do

[–] thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

That's definitely the way to go for now. PT is pretty ok software from the creator pov but it's atrocious as someone just looking to view! We'll see how things develop, maybe that changes at some point.