Conclusions

Federation is the way to go to build a better web than what we have today, and PeerTube may play a critical role in this space. The (current) complexity of its software [13], coupled with the intrinsically heavy requirements of video streaming, probably make PeerTube not yet suitable for many individual users.

At the same time, I consider PeerTube already suitable, and perfectly within reach, for many organizations of any size and nature, from schools and universities to NGOs and web-hosting cooperatives. Considering this, let me finish with two proposals that may make PeerTube much easier to use, and thus greatly facilitate its adoption.

One is to create an official ISO image and container of some bare-bones Linux distribution, with all (really all) and only the software needed to run PeerTube.

Another is a single-user PeerTube aggregator, that is a web front end to multiple, independent PeerTube instances. Such an interface ("myPeerTube"?), may be installed even on free or very cheap hosting accounts, because it would not host video. It may even become a Nextcloud plugin! In any case, it would allow any individual to seamlessly use multiple, independent instances that, for whatever reason, do not want to federate with each other. Anybody could subscribe from a single window to those instances and see all the corresponding videos and notifications in that same, single window. I believe that with a client like this, and a really turn-key "PeerTube Linux" distribution or container, PeerTube adoption would greatly increase. What do you think?