The Fedidb graph of active Peertube users shows a huge bump from September to October - an increase of more than 10 000, coming from just over 20 000 in September.
Does anyone have any idea what happened there? Did Peertube change how active users were counted?
Sadly, the nature of some of the biggest Peertube instances makes the whole thing a bit less joyful. The fourth largest instance is obviously dedicated to gore, based on its name. I'm care about my eyes too much to check out the others on the list, beyond libre.video which is fine.
I thought it was released more recently, but you're right, the first version was published in September. Still, it seems like a huge bump in users for the release of an app that currently has just north of 1k downloads on Android - and it's strange that the growth is so contained within one month. I think there's probably something going one here related to how users are counted.
Based on the most active servers in that list, I would guess that either something is up with those numbers or the biggest instance actually is a let's play fan website, and a significant amount of the growth is coming from similar projects.
It is definitely not because of the mobile app, however.
Thanks to your comment (and this post), I discovered that Rawb now has a peertube instance. I used to follow him when he was actively doing pokémon nuzlocks and also URealms.
I might be totally wrong here, but I think this is people trying to learn linux in anticipation of Windows 11.
Last time I looked at peertube EVERY video was a linux tutorial. So if there's an influx of people watching linux content, but no influx of linux users, that tells me these are non-users trying to learn what they don't know.
With that said, my source is my ass, and I may have a huge bias, as I'M currently trying (and failing) to learn linux. I hadn't considered peertube, but logically now that you mention it.....maybe I SHOULD try peertube! I mean it makes sense, right?