Hot take: Most PeerTube instances shouldn’t just hand out accounts to anyone—and here’s the reality check. Running a PeerTube server isn’t like YouTube. There’s no trillion-dollar corporation footing the bill. Instead, small community admins juggle:
The major points are:
- Storage costs (video files add up fast!)
- Moderation work (spam, trolls, and legal risks)
- Bandwidth limits
- Abuse handling (because yes, people will test boundaries) Yet, a lot of sign-up requests sound like (at least from what I see on my instance):
“I wanna upload videos.” “I’m starting a Roblox channel.”
Sorry, but that’s not enough. Admins aren’t obligated to give free hosting to strangers. A good admin looks for people who:
- Fit the community’s vibe (e.g., a coding-focused instance won’t host gaming streams).
- Show effort—like sharing a portfolio or explaining why their content adds value.
Example: If you applied with a sample of your work or a clear plan? Hell yes, I’d consider you. But if your pitch is just “I want free hosting,” why should the community foot the bill?
TL;DR: PeerTube isn’t a free-for-all. “I just wanna upload stuff” isn’t a good reason. Bring something to the table.
Ooh question though. Can a peertube admin limit a new account to non-posting activities, i.e. subscribing, liking, commenting, etc? Even in that case, I feel like vetting/limiting sign-ups is super important, but you could be slightly more lax for accounts that aren’t interested in posting anything, right?
So there is option to allow upload but videos needs to be manually aproved.
You can get pretty granular on the permissions of users. I host one myself and it’s a family server.
You could simply put the storage quota at 0 and the user wont be able to upload anything. Then the admin can give a quota to the user later.