Yeah the account vs channel thing was confusing as a new creator signing up there. On Mastodon you can follow either, but the videos are always posted by the account first and then just boosted by the channel.

Following an account means you're automatically subbed to all the person's channels so most prefer to do that anyway, whereas obviously following just a channel is just that channel. This has the vaguely amusing side effect of making channel sub counts absolutely tiny, even if the account has a lot of followers.

I kind of get the impression accounts were supposed to be analogous to YT channels, and channels to YT playlists. But then there's playlists too so honestly it's a bit of a mess. If any future PeerTube creators are reading this just make sure your account name is the actual brand! Don't make the same mistake I did lol.