I'm running a private, unfederated node; it works. I watch TILVIDS whenever I can find something on there.

This is not an "if you build it, they will come" scenario,

There's no monetization, so there are almost no content creators.

Creators generally don't do it for free.

Good creators rely on income from the videos to produce higher-quality videos

Youtube: surfaces creators' videos pays creators hosts the videos handles CDN

Peertube: The creator pays to host the video (largely against their ISP's wishes) There's no surfacing There's no payments If you're lucky peertube doesn't need CDN.

Even if they go all patreon, they're still not getting that extra cash, surfacing, and free hosting that youtube does.

We need some kind of FOSS Patreon and to have Peertube do some kind of partner/recommendation engine.