This brainstorm is motivated by two recent discussions:

When is it time to switch away from youtube?

Lemmy community feedback: Should we fetch and combine comments from cross-posts on the post screen? · Issue #3415 · LemmyNet/lemmy-ui

The conversations about YouTube alternatives and PeerTube’s limitations made me test the current state of Lemmy <--> PeerTube federation.

Federation already works quite well: you can pull in PeerTube channels, subscribe, upvote, and comment from Lemmy.

But I did notice one thing. Take this Techlore video on PeerTube:

https://techlore.tv/w/9a7d20d2-4cc1-4911-8fd7-0794d8fe3bd9

-> On PeerTube: 6 upvotes, 4 comments

I pulled the video into my instance and was able to upvote it from there, so federated voting is working well: https://mander.xyz/post/37959974

I then noticed it had also been cross-posted to lemmy.world: https://lemmy.world/post/35205985

-> On lemmy.world: 37 upvotes, 9 comments

So the cross-post has significantly more engagement than the original video. This highlights a visibility issue: PeerTube creators may be getting more reach than they realize, but that engagement is fragmented across federated posts.

Brainstorm

Would it make sense to allow cross-posting of already-federated PeerTube content without breaking the link to the original object?

Upvotes/likes: These could be funneled back into the original PeerTube video, so creators get a true sense of their reach.

Comments: Less clear. Should all comments be merged into the video thread, or should they remain scoped to the Lemmy community they were posted in?

I don’t think this is “GitHub issue” ready, but it seems worth discussing.