Agree. If only I could convince more of my friends to drop siloed socials and get fediverse accounts, I'd have a solution for that, but that's not happening.
https://www.mojeek.com/ I have as my default browser search to try to support as its the only real large index comparable to Google and Bing (DDG uses), but it falls short a lot.
DDG is my primary engine when I need something fast / the others don't work.
If I can't find it in the small web and regular search fails, I'll sometimes try the udm14 Google trick https://udm14.com/
After that its posting to the askfedi hashtag (or ask here)
I wouldn't mind age or "is a person" verification done with privacy protecting means, such as GNU Taler blind signed token solutions that are open source and audited by independent security teams, but that isn't getting implemented. Instead every "verification" service is a literal privacy nightmare simultaneously linking identity to speech and harvesting user data for sale.
Non-EU parts of the world should be encouraged to have better data privacy laws as part of their trade deals with the EU.
https://fedi-search.com/ which just adds the site parameters for different popular instances for the major search engines is probably the closest we have.
Marginalia.nu at least indexes the small web, but to my knowledge doesn't really index the fedi yet.
The web instances work pretty well, that's a shame the iOS app didn't work for you. I'm only a consumer not a producer of video content so I interact with a fedi microblogging platform instead of having an account on a peertube platform itself. The Android app seemed okay but following users with RSS and interacting via my microblogging account, as well as directly checking my favorite platforms' sites occasionally for serendipity seems to work the best for me.
I'm sure with the fundraising blitz the apps will get better too this year.
https://theindiebeat.fm/ - in many ways a successor to RadioFreeFedi that plays a variety of channels of Fedi indie artists. Plays opted in artists hosted on Bandwagon.
Outside getting people to join a fedi platform, Matrix instance, or Signal, all a non-trivial ask, you could see if they're on Discord or WhatsApp already, which while neither is great at least its a step away. You could do a simple SMS group, if you are okay with the privacy risks - almost everyone still had a phone number.
Post mail surprisingly is still a thing too if you are okay with delayed messages and there being cost.
Agree. If only I could convince more of my friends to drop siloed socials and get fediverse accounts, I'd have a solution for that, but that's not happening.