When I use peertube, I interact in limited ways. I dont like, I dont subscribe. And Im not commenting. I usually only watch. I also find it slightly inaccessible.

And that’s not because I don’t want to interact.

Rather, it is because I don’t think there are convenient and meaningful ways to do so as of now. On the one side, if you use your peertube account to interact with content from the site itself, it will work well. However content abroad is inconvenient and requires insight. For example it requires several clicks and typing in your federated account to interact with a video.

Secondly, it isn’t attractive for passerbys to create an peertube account, because the software is primarily targeted toward video creators, and not the spectators.

Thirdly, it will increase the responsibilities of admins and moderators. Not only would they have to keep track of videos following terms, but also that users are interacting well.

I believe Peertube should outsource interaction and subscription to a new federated software. Let’s call it Duckling just for the sake of making it easier to reference. Duckling is somewhat of an interaction service. Here you can subscribe to channels and instances, renamed to idols and pubs respectively, just to make it more human.

If you find a joyful instance, you can add it to your pubs. Pubs should be visited to find new idols.

One of the reason I find this idea quite interesting is because it would decompose peertube into smaller and more meaningful projects. Peertube could focus on making the best video hosting service, whereas Duckling could focus on becoming the best spectator service. For example, Duckling could experiment with how to display threads and sort comments. Or make it easier to discover relevant content.

As the development progress of such software, it could be meaningful to expand the scope of Duckling. Perhaps to make it more of a general purpose federated subscription service.