I’m just trying to find an instance where I can create an account to subscribe to channels… Preferably a Canadian one that’s not run one someone’s old PC in a closet.

I tried to subscribe with Mastodon, but I never see the updates.

On my own instance I am using “Recent Views” - where in the backend (sadly, not user-configurable as far as I know), it’s set to 3 days, so “trending” will be whatever got the most views in the network in the past 3 days - which I personally found to be the “best of the worst” of the sorting algorithms at the moment, definitely better than the “hot” algorithm (AFAIK an adaptation of Reddit’s old algorithm).

There’s also PeerTube Picks - a Firefox add-on which tries to provide a little bit of a personalised-algorithm experience as an opt-in feature, but that one is extremely basic at this point. I did find a few interesting videos I would have otherwise missed with it, but I would be lying if its anything more than a very bare-bones curiosity at this time.

Other than that, discoverability still is the biggest blind spot - searching videos on Sepia Search, building up a subscription catalogue, casually browsing the “Discover tab” to maybe find one creator you might like in the random selection, or even browsing the “New” section of videos are still the main things to do. Oh, and this community here, of course, as well as [email protected] - without more complex algorithms and the like, word of mouth is also a good way to find new stuff.

Note that at this stage of development - while the name might indicate otherwise - the position of PeerTube and Framasoft is to firstly aim for creating an alternative to Vimeo and other hosting-focused solutions, where unlike YouTube, the algorithm and distribution aspects aren’t front and centre. While better ways to discover content through PeerTube itself are being worked on, it’s not the biggest focus, at least at this moment in time.