I had a similar experience. I like the idea of PeerTube, but not the execution. It needs significant improvements to make it more friendly for viewers to use as a video portal, rather than relying on subscribers and platforms like Mastodon to fill that gap.

YouTube pays its creators in peanuts. That’s why almost every YouTube video has a sponsor, or is thanking its Patreons, or both.

I have a full-paying job, so I don’t bother with monetization. I feel like monetization is a boat anchor designed to shackle creators with arcane unspoken rules and unfair copyright claims. (My Babylon 5 video is still technically marked as ineligible because I criticized TNT when talking about Crusade.) I specifically signed up for Google AdSense to turn off ads on my YouTube videos.

I think what PeerTube is doing by having a Support section is good enough. Donate to your instance or donate to your creators directly. It’s a helluva lot more money than YouTube would be paying.

One, it was intentional, because I wasn’t sure if there was going to be some lag trying to download the posts there. Two, the example link here doesn’t work because the videos are actually on !metastatistical.pt@spectra.video

Very cool. Population of videos takes a while, but at least the ability is there. I still wonder how practical it is.