Here’s an instance that does follow spectra.video > https://peertube.wtf (my instance), but I also only follow a select few instances, because there is a lot of crap being uploaded to the videoverse and that just makes for a worse experience.

That's also Sean's experience with administrating Spectra.video. And that's one of the main problems, isn't it?

With Lemmy, the posts are well-moderated and most of the good content bubbles up to the top, on the highest-populated servers. Both community moderation and instance moderation are working well. Everybody is federated with almost everybody else because, with only a few exceptions, the community is healthy and thriving.

With PeerTube, there's so much random crap being uploaded, with no real community-based moderation (like upvoting). The top servers are either European politics, non-English content, or gore-related. There's also a lot of people that are more concerned with using PeerTube as a backup outlet than actually serving content to users.

There is nothing however that would keep you from searching for or following any channel, on peertube.wtf because global search is enabled.

That doesn't tie into the home or discover videos page, though. Any random user that wonders into YouTube might be searching for something specific, or might just be clicking on random videos on the home page. Eventually, YouTube customizes the content to fit the user's tastes. I don't even have to specifically look at my subscriptions. The main home page already gives me good recommendations.

If PeerTube is going to take off as a YouTube replacement, it needs to find a way to keep new users from immediately clicking away when they browse the home/discover pages.