I set up a peertube instance last night!
It can be found at https://bolitoglossa.com
The name of Bolitoglossa comes from the genus of the mushroom-tongued salamanders, which are arguably some of the coolest salamanders out there. I’ve modified the style CSS to match the style of mander.xyz and to give it what I think is a clenar look, feedback is welcome.
In my opinion, what the ecosystem needs is more ‘regular’ videos, similar to old-style youtube. Video blogs, amateur tutorials, home experiments, videos about a birds eating food in the backyard - simple content that anyone can share. Things to make people engage with each other through video. So I will moderate the instance with this view in mind - most topics are allowed, but NSFW, hate speech, and misleadingly dangerous content will be removed.
As of now I have the registration unrestricted and a 20GB daily upload limit. If I run into problems with these settings I will adjust accordingly in response.
The data is stored on an SSD that I physically own. I will leave the instance running indefinitely, but if for any reason I have to take it down I will do my best to give a fair warning and I will try to make sure the owners can keep their videos. But as an amateur self-hoster I am not able to make stronger guarantees.
Feel free to use this instance to upload content, or ask me questions about how to set up your own.
I will be pragmatic. I can’t define hard boundaries, and I need to encounter different examples in practice. As of now there is a grand total of zero users, so it even feels a bit silly to be making rules. But the idea is that we need spaces where people can come by and feel safe sharing simple videos, without the need of encountering a polarizing environment.
Since you are asking for specificity, what I have in mind when I write “hate speech” is videos that strongly motivate hate and/or violence towards a person or group of people, or videos that in themselves are an attack. So, a video meant to cyberbully someone, a video that advocates eliminating people of a particular race, videos that launch serious accusations towards people that are not in power.
So:
A person does not believe that affirmative action is appropriate, and posts a video arguing that only absolute merit should count, and race should not be taken into account. This is not a problem.
A person believes that illegal immigrants are coming into the country and taking jobs, and argues that citizens should put their right to bear arms to good use and help eliminate this problem. This is not appropriate.
Another example that comes to mind is when videos are made accusing private individuals of being ‘crisis actors’, and these private individuals are doxxed. These kind of videos I would also consider to be hateful as they promote hate towards these specific non-public figures.
Again, nothing is set in stone. This is not really about me pushing any politics, but about trying to create a node within this environment to serve the purpose of having simple, not very polarizing videos.
One of the nice things about the fediverse is that different communities can have different standards and as long as nobody gets banhappy or instance block happy we can coexist.
Different admins are going to have different levels that they are comfortable with. I see people using my instances to be a jerk, and I don’t like it but I tolerate it. On the other hand, one time I saw an isis video end up on one of my instances, pretty sure that’s crossed the line for me. On the other hand, my peer tube has a whole bunch of commercial videos that I don’t particularly like but I allow because I’m not their dad, I don’t need to condone every thing I see and the user is playing nice otherwise.
Yeah, it is a balancing act. With regards to federation I am a lot more open. The line to block another instance is a lot farther - I’ve never even considered blocking an instance yet on here.