Hot take: Most PeerTube instances shouldn’t just hand out accounts to anyone—and here’s the reality check. Running a PeerTube server isn’t like YouTube. There’s no trillion-dollar corporation footing the bill. Instead, small community admins juggle:
The major points are:
- Storage costs (video files add up fast!)
- Moderation work (spam, trolls, and legal risks)
- Bandwidth limits
- Abuse handling (because yes, people will test boundaries) Yet, a lot of sign-up requests sound like (at least from what I see on my instance):
“I wanna upload videos.” “I’m starting a Roblox channel.”
Sorry, but that’s not enough. Admins aren’t obligated to give free hosting to strangers. A good admin looks for people who:
- Fit the community’s vibe (e.g., a coding-focused instance won’t host gaming streams).
- Show effort—like sharing a portfolio or explaining why their content adds value.
Example: If you applied with a sample of your work or a clear plan? Hell yes, I’d consider you. But if your pitch is just “I want free hosting,” why should the community foot the bill?
TL;DR: PeerTube isn’t a free-for-all. “I just wanna upload stuff” isn’t a good reason. Bring something to the table.
Ooh question though. Can a peertube admin limit a new account to non-posting activities, i.e. subscribing, liking, commenting, etc? Even in that case, I feel like vetting/limiting sign-ups is super important, but you could be slightly more lax for accounts that aren’t interested in posting anything, right?
You can get pretty granular on the permissions of users. I host one myself and it’s a family server.
So there is option to allow upload but videos needs to be manually aproved.
You could simply put the storage quota at 0 and the user wont be able to upload anything. Then the admin can give a quota to the user later.