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.
You can still have open registrations, but not allow uploads. Most people don’t have stuff to upload, but just need an instance with the most reach and a place to keep track of content.
You can just use your mastodon account for that. Peertube accounts without channels dont really make sense.
Sure, if you have or want to use Mastodon.
No. Its no different if you make a peertube or a mastodon account just to interact with videos. More importabtly, you can interact with more instances because on peertube, federation is opt in while on mastodon it is opt out.
So no, you download mastodon app or visit a mastodon website, make an account (which is better than corpo media anyway) and interact with peertube the same as you would otherwise with a peertube account.
But if you just want to use PeerTube, using Mastodon just introduces extra steps.
Not really. You make an account either way and you can just follow creators on mastodon just the same.
Wouldn’t you need to use PeerTube to discover and search for content? So you have would to go back and forth between PeerTube and Mastodon.
So obviously, if you just want to consume videos, it’s the best experience to use PeerTube.
Not necessarily. You can search and subscribe to peertube channels and get notified about new videos on mastodon. All this stuff is new and massively underfunded so of course comparing it to billion dollar projects is naive.