this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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Peertube isn't really a viable alternative. There isn't a substantial enough audience for creators and there isn't really enough content for an audience. I guess if you're one of the 100 people watching transport evolved that's cool but it isn't really a meaningful alternative. I suppose it could be supplementary, but why would creators want to drive their traffic to a site that doesn't actually matter for their visibility? I imagine the same probably applies to loops.
Also, like, with video you kind of want a reliable host that you know isn't going anywhere.
The rest are okay as long as you're not super worried about how many people are seeing what you post. Lemmy and Piefed are great for content aggregation and discussion, but they seem to be the only ones that at this point actually do anything that might be helpful.
I've tried Mastodon and while it's way better than Twitter it isn't exactly providing a way to reach a substantial audience. Personal websites are probably a better bet for ease of access.
For most other formats, everyone creates and shares: photos, posts, sharing links. For more crafted video material, there's too much of an imbalance between the number of watchers vs creators to make a new platform an easy sell. You'd need a strong creator promise like Nebula.
Yeah, agreed. The one thing the platforms you see that aren't YouTube that creators actually use have in common is financial incentive. Nebula is the best example here. Creators get a cut and have more creative freedom, so they actually use it and try to direct their audience to it for bonus content, which seems to actually work. Patreon is similar for a lot of creators, letting them put out additional content with fewer restrictions and letting them get more income from their viewers.
Some people also seem to have some success with independent platforms. If you look at like a Dropout or Viva Plus, these are both putting stuff out on YouTube and then drawing users in with subscriptions, and that seems to be a sound model.
But Peertube produces zero dollars for creators, which means they have no incentive to push users there. In fact, they're incentivized to avoid doing so because there are other platforms that will actually pay them if they can direct traffic there. Peertube lacks both the money-making side of things and the exposure side of things, so there's no real reason to use it.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see something independent like Peertube take off, but the model doesn't really work.
But you can have metrics with subscriptions/likes/comments and you could get revenue through sponsorship. Also it would avoid censorship.