LOL, no

I wish it was the alternative to youtube we all want it to be but it’s not and likely never will be.

You’re kind of asking 2 questions with this. When I think of a platform’s maturity, I’m thinking of the ecosystem for producing and publishing content. Tools, so to speak. In that regard, PT is fine. It has all the things you need to create your channel and begin publishing content as well as a good system for feedback. So as for maturity I would say yes it’s mature enough for people to start using it.

On to your second question:

do you think PT is ready to bring visibility to new creators?

No unfortunately not even close. There are very few big PT instances and even those that exist feel like they’re almost starved for content. There are a decent amount of creators on these instances but little to no viewers. It feels very similar to the earliest days of YT (think 2006-2008), but even smaller than YT was back then.

I do wish it’d catch on though

PeerTube the software is stable, yes and has features that YouTube actually lacks. However, PeerTube the software and the “videoverse” lack several things.

• The PeerTube “videoverse” is very fragmented compared to the rest of the Fediverse. Most PeerTube instances doesn’t federate with each other, making content harder to find.
• PeerTube lacks any kind of personal algorithm. This makes discoverability pretty bad and it can be hard to find content for your interests.

I must say though, that PeerTube has plenty of content to watch. Not near the same amount of YouTube, but you do have content creators on PeerTube, making content without the incentive of ad income. PeerTube feels a lot like “old YouTube”, where everyone wasn’t trying to make a living on YouTube, but just making content for the passion.

• An example: While I wouldn’t recommend using this instance, check out tilvids.com, which has many creators.

• Or TinkerBetter.tube, an instance for a content creator, with 60.000 views.

• Or MakerTube.net for very creative content creators with almost 300.000 views.

Even with PeerTube’s current flaws (which can be fixed), I think PT is ready. It is usable. No, you probably can’t find every topic imaginable and no, it won’t ever be as big as YouTube, with billions of videos and millions of views on videos. But that is okay. IT doesn’t have to reach those numbers. You can watch content on PT now. The discoverability is just lacking.

Absolutely not. Peertube not only stuggles to share content to enough eyes to matter, it’s hurdles for both creators and viewers to participate are higher than any other Fediverse platform out there. To clarify my point, act as a viewer, start out at the Peertube homepage, and get to the point where you can build a subscription list, make a comment and interact(upvote) 10 videos pertaining to 10 different genres you enjoy. After a day of trying, I gave up.

Peertube would need a huge intuitiveness boost to become anything more than a fun side-project for tech nerds.

You can absolutely share your videos and livestreams with it. Technically it is all working well and also includes nice tools to migrate or mirror your content from Youtube etc.

But there is no real audience and even relatively well known tech vbloggers often get only low double digit views on their videos.

There needs to be a Fediverse platform just for viewing and commenting on videos without being a video publisher yourself. Then we’d see a lot more traffic coming to PeerTube channels. It also needs to provide a good mechanism for discovering channels you’re not already aware of.

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The problem is lack of content and difficulty to find it. It’s a chicken or egg problem. Put content there, right now there’s virtually nothing worth watching. Wish there was but I can’t find anything. Not even simple instruction videos, which is a shame.

It’s mature enough for someone wanting to build their own platform for their own audience. If you want to post viral videos and magically make money, then no.

No.