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Decentralised YouTube alternative Odysee no longer serving ads (odysee.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

313 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Odysee, a decentralised YouTube alternative focused on free speech, is officially ending the serving of ads on the platform, starting today. The post:

"Dear friends of Odysee, Starting today, we're removing all ads. We don't need ads to make money as a platform and we are confident in the development of our own new monetisation programs that will help creators earn a living and at the same time keep Odysee alive. Ultimately, sacrificing the overall user experience to make a few bucks isn't worth it to us and nor is it even sustainable for a platform that wishes to make something truly open and creatively free.

As we take this decision, one thing is certain to us, media platforms (even ones that market themselves as 'free-speech') typically devolve into advertising companies and end up becoming beholden to their paymasters. It's been that way for centuries and is never going to change.

As we see YouTube become more aggressive with their ad deployment and 'Free Speech' platforms try to build their own ad businesses it's apparent to us that we're building a model for Odysee that will keep it sustainable not only financially, but in its ability to provide an incorruptible user experience.

Our approach may be considered niche or unconventional, that's fine by us. Odysee will be used by the world on terms that are agreeable to its users, and we know our users don't like ads.

Best, Founder & Creator, Chief Executive Officer. Julian Chandra"

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

You sometimes see that stuff on Odysee because they don't censor it, unless it promotes violence or hatred to individuals. They do have community guidelines after all, since they can't legally host... illegal content. In that sense there is censorship because they can't not censor things to some extent; but the free speech and large lack of censorship is their goal regardless. As an Odysee user for over 2 years, this is the minority of content on the platform. Where you do see that content that breaks the rules... that's what the report button is for.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

You sometimes see that stuff on Odysee because they don’t censor it, unless it promotes violence or hatred to individuals.

All neo-nazi /far right content promotes violence and hatred to individuals, since groups are made up of individuals.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

My understanding was that Odysee served the purpose to upload videos that could no longer be uploaded on YouTube due to YouTube’s community guidelines. The time I checked out that website the front page was full of manosphere types and the Evropa documentary and anti vax crap

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

That was never the purpose of the platform, otherwise it would have been marketed that way. The platform allows more content than YouTube does, so it's not far-fetched to assume that people would use the platform for that, and tell others they should use the platform because of that. What random people on the internet promoted the platform being good for is not the same thing as the platform owners themselves creating the platform for that very purpose. If you really care about the "purpose" of the platform, just watch some of LBRY's oldest videos on the platform from before the Odysee frontend even existed yet for LBRY; where they were first revealing their visions for the platform and the progress they had made.

Also note that plenty of people upload stuff to Odysee for their preservation efforts. Just because some documentary that talks about medical misinformation or promotes a conspiracy theory (for example), exists on the platform; it doesn't necessarily mean that it's there to promote the idea; it's simply there so that people who want to see the video can see it. I'll watch content that was censored from YouTube and other big-tech social media platforms because I just want to see what was said. People have the right to that level of freedom; Odysee provides it because they should.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago

That was never the purpose of the platform, otherwise it would have been marketed that way.

This implies that marketing is always or usually honest. I would argue that the exact reverse is true. In fact I was involved once in a series of marketing meetings where a marketing guru who had worked with some huge companies said flat out that "marketing is a lie" and he meant it literally. He explained that you're selling an idea, and thus it wouldn't be possible for it to be actually honest. Since you cannot buy a product that will solve all your problems, and yet that idea is implied in most ads. Happy smiling people somehow result from anything you can buy? Pfft.

Obviously that's not going to be how you market a video platform exactly, but also they were never going with a tagline like "Because YouTube doesn't allow bigotry!" whether it's true or not. Facebook doesn't market their service as a way to monetize your personal data despite the fact that it's exactly what it is. Marketing is inherently misleading at best.

The platform allows more content than YouTube does

That's just a different way of phrasing what was said and you seem to be disputing...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Yikes. So if there weren't laws, they would let worse stuff fly than endorsing genocide.