If you run your own PeerTube server, when you first load it up it’s totally empty. You can upload your own videos of course, and if you’re running a public server your members can upload videos too. However, it may still seem a bit bare compared to centralised video sites like YouTube etc.
That’s where federation comes in! 🥳
If you run your own PeerTube server, as well as uploading your own videos and your members’ videos, you can federate videos from other servers by following them using your server’s federation tools. You can curate who you federate with to produce a unique video catalogue on your site, sort of like creating a mixtape ⧉.
If you want you can allow other servers to follow your server as well, but this is optional and you don’t have to allow it if you don’t want to. See the section marked “How do I control who federates my server’s videos?” for more details.
Why would I want to federate videos on PeerTube?
When you use your server’s federation tools, the videos from the servers or accounts being followed will appear on your server’s website too and be searchable from your site. The videos won’t actually be hosted on your server so they won’t take up any of your server space, federation just means that people will be able to watch, browse and search videos from other servers on your server’s website.
Federation is a way of helping people discover videos on a wider range of servers, and for this reason you may want to federate your server’s videos to other servers too. By the way, federation only happens with the permission of the other servers and/or video creators. The other servers and/or creators have to set their PeerTube to allow it, and they can optionally do it with an approval system to check who is requesting federation.
Do federated videos take up space or bandwidth on my server?
No, the federated videos are hosted on the server where they were uploaded. Federating doesn’t take up any of your server’s storage space or bandwidth.
How to federate another PeerTube server’s videos to yours
There are two approaches to federating videos from other PeerTube servers:
- Following an entire other server, which is quickest and displays the most videos, but it may include accounts you would rather not federate.
- Following specific accounts or channels, which is slowest and most labour intensive, but it means you’re customising your server’s federated feed to be exactly what you want it to be.
You can federate a mixture of servers and specific accounts in whatever combination you want. To actually do the federation:
- Log onto your PeerTube server’s website with your admin account.
- Click on Settings (you may need to click ☰ and then Settings if you’re using a phone)
- Click the Federation tab
- Click Follow
- In the new window, type or paste the domain names of the servers you want to federate to your server, and/or the accounts and/or the channels you want to federate to your server. You can type several as long as there’s a new line for each one.
- Click the Follow button of the window
After you’ve done this, follow requests will be sent to the servers and/or accounts and/or channels, and when the federation has been accepted you’ll see an Accepted label next to their names on the federation list.
If you change your mind, you can remove a server or account or channel by clicking Delete next to its name.
If you’ve forgotten who you federated with, you can browse the list or search it using the Filter box above it.
Which servers, accounts and channels should I federate with?
If you want suggestions for specific creators, there are some good PeerTube accounts and channels listed over on Fedi.Directory ⧉.
If you want suggestions for of nice servers to federate, here are some good ones:
(DISCLAIMER: I have not watched every video from every channel on these servers, there are far too many. I’ve tried my best but cannot guarantee the nature of their content. Please view a server yourself before you decide to federate with it.)
- all.electric.kitchen – Experimental electronic music videos
- archive.reclaim.tv – American community television station promoting FOSS in education
- communitymedia.video – General server covering many topics, offering low cost video hosting to community channels
- conf.tube – Technology conference video archive
- dudelike.wtf – Personal server for a chilled-out dude posting on life, cooking, meditation etc.
- fedi.video – Creative commons and public domain feature films, documentaries and curiosities, also silent films with modern soundtracks added, run by the creator of fedi.tips 🙂
- flipboard.video – Official server for Flipboard, the news aggregation and curation platform
- makertube.net – Server for creative people who create, build, design or fix things
- media.fsfe.org – Official server of the Free Software Foundation Europe (NOTE: not affiliated in any way with the Free Software Foundation in the USA)
- media.privacyinternational.org – Official server of Privacy International, an NGO campaigning for privacy as a human right
- peer.tube – General server covering many topics, mainly in French, run by the creators of PeerTube’s server software
- peertube.art3mis.de – Educational and video game videos, mainly in German and English
- peertube.dair-institute.org – Institute set up by experts that are sceptical of the AI industry
- peertube.kaleidos.net – Official server of Penpot, FOSS UI prototyping software
- peertube.openrightsgroup.org – Official server of Open Rights Group, a UK NGO campaigning for civil liberties online
- peertube.tv – General server covering many topics, run by the creators of the mstdn.social Mastodon server
- peertube-us.howlround.com – Occasional livestreams from American theatre project
- puppet.zone – Artist’s server creating lovely muppets-style puppets
- solarsystem.video – Space and planetary science videos, including short documentaries, long-form academic lectures etc, run by the Planetary Research Cooperative
- spectra.video – General server covering many topics, run by creator of WeDistribute social network news site
- tilvids.com – Educational and entertainment videos, informative in some way
- tinkerbetter.tube – Official server of the popular Veronica Explains series about FOSS, Linux, retro technology etc.
- toobnix.org – General server covering many topics, run by the SDF Public Access UNIX system
- trentontube.trentonhoshiko.com – Film-making, cinematography and photography videos by low-budget film-maker
- tube.fediverse.games – Gaming video server, covering all forms of gaming
- tube.kockatoo.org – KDE software development community videos
- tube.tchncs.de – General server covering many topics, mainly in English and German
- tubefree.org – General server covering many topics, run by the non-profit BT Free
- tv.dilstories.com – Film-making and short films, run by award-winning Ugandan director
- urbanists.video – City planning, public transport and cycling enthusiasts
- v.basspistol.org – Music videos from independent and underground artists of many genres
- video.blender.org – Official server of Blender, the free open source 3D animation suite
- video.canadiancivil.com – City planning, public transport and cycling videos, covers world but often features Canada
- video.fedihost.co – Tutorials, tips and podcasts about hosting your own Fediverse servers including Mastodon, Peertube, GoToSocial etc.
- video.firesidefedi.live – Interviews with familiar faces from around the Fediverse, also gaming and programming videos by the server’s maintainer
- video.franzgraf.de – Hiking and cycling videos, in English but from the mountains of Germany
- video.gamerstavern.online – Video game videos from a friendly non-toxic gaming community
- video.hardlimit.com – Video game and technology videos in English and Spanish
- video.infosec.exchange – General server covering many topics, run by the admins of the infosec.exchange Mastodon server
- video.katehildenbrand.com – Gardener and marine biologist posting on nature, gardening, biology, food etc.
- video.stevesworld.co – Music videos by singer-songwriter
- video.thepolarbear.co.uk – Personal server for a fun livestreamer and his friends, often features pop culture and technology
- videos.elenarossini.com – Documentaries by Italian film-maker and Fediverse fan
- vod.newellijay.tv – Community television station based in the USA, hosting all kinds of programmes including music, theatre, sport, archive public domain films etc.
If you think I’m missing something, or if you think I shouldn’t be listing one of these, please contact me.
Can I find any other lists of servers or accounts/channels to follow?
Yes, if you go to any PeerTube server’s website you can view its network:
- Go to a PeerTube server’s website
- Click More Info (or ☰ and More Info if you’re on a phone)
- Click the Network tab
- The Subscriptions section shows the servers and accounts/channels that the server is following, the Followers section shows other servers that are following that server.
You can use these network pages of other servers to get suggestions for which other servers and accounts/channels to follow. The network page will be different on each server.
Which videos from a server get federated to my server? Is it just the server’s own videos, or all the videos that it federates with too?
It’s just the server’s own videos.
For example if you follow fedi.video the only videos it would federate to your server would be those hosted on fedi.video, it would not include videos that are visible on fedi.video but hosted on other servers.
How do I see just the videos on a particular server, and hide the videos it has federated from other servers?
To just see a server’s own videos and hide all the videos it has federated from elsewhere:
- Go to the server’s website
- Click the Browse Videos tab
- Click the More Filters link just below the “Videos on…” heading
- In the Displayed Videos dropdown menu, select “Only videos from this platform”
These are the videos that would be federated to your server if you follow them.
Which videos get federated?
By default all of the videos get federated. PeerTube uses “backfilling” so that when you federate with a particular server, account or channel it checks to see all the videos it has ever uploaded.
How do I screen out sensitive or “NSFW” videos?
Some servers may contain sensitive content such as adult content, or distressing images such as from a war etc. Most servers which allow such content require the uploader to mark it as sensitive, which means other servers can easily take appropriate action about this content.
If you want to hide or blur sensitive videos viewed via your server, do the following:
- Log onto your PeerTube server with your admin account
- Click on Settings (you may need to click ☰ and then Settings if you’re using a phone)
- Click the Information tab
- Scroll down to the section marked Moderation & NSFW
- From the dropdown menu marked Policy on videos containing sensitive content, select “Hide” to hide them completely or “Blur” to show them but with a blurred thumbnail
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Update Configuration button
This applies to all sensitive videos, including from your server and from other servers you federate with.
If you encounter a sensitive video that has not been marked as sensitive, you might want to stop following the server it came from and contact the owner of the server to let them know about it.
How do I control who federates my server’s videos? How can I switch federation on or off? How can I screen who federates my server?
Here’s how to adjust who can federate your server’s videos:
- Log onto your PeerTube server with your admin account
- Click on Settings (you may need to click ☰ and then Settings if you’re using a phone)
- Click the Basic tab
- Scroll down to the section marked Federation
- If you want other servers to be able to federate your server’s videos, tick the box marked “Other instances can follow yours”.
- If you are allowing federation but you want to manually approve each server that federates yours, tick the box marked “Manually approve new instance followers”.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Update Configuration button
If you’ve set your server to allow federation but with manual approval, you will get a notification to your admin account that there is a server wanting to federate your server’s videos. You can click on the notification or go to Settings > Federation > Followers to approve or deny the federation request.
I tried to federate an account to my server but not all of its videos are showing up. What’s going wrong?
In theory if you federate a PeerTube account to your server it should show all the videos from all of the account’s channels. However in practice it sometimes doesn’t do this reliably. This can be solved by also following all the channels that belong to that account, which makes all the account’s videos show up properly.
I just want to show one channel from an account but not the whole account, can I do this?
Yes. If you just follow the particular channel you want and don’t follow the overall account, only that channel’s videos will show up on your server.
If I federate an account or a server, does it show older videos uploaded a while ago?
Yes, it shows all the videos ever uploaded by that account or server. PeerTube uses “backfilling” to show everything a PeerTube account has ever posted.
(Obviously though, sensitive videos would be hidden if you have set your server to do so.)