this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
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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] 153 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Focused on “free speech”?

When I see that used multiple times by a platform operator it invariably means they’re right-wing wingnuts and/or the platform will devolve into right wing drivel while silencing dissent.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Yup. And on descriptive grounds, the whole thing falls into a false dichotomy: treating free speech as an all-or-nothing matter, instead treating freedom of speech as a scale. And that giving someone complete freedom of speech always means restricting the freedom of speech of someone else.

(I typically exemplify this through a guy with a megaphone in an offline plaza. Telling him to drop off the megaphone reduces his ability to reach willing listeners, thus his freedom of speech; but if you leave him alone nobody else can be heard, so their freedom of speech is lowered.)

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (5 children)

The only way free speech can survive is with decentralized platforms like email and lemmy. Any time there is central control free speech isn't.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (10 children)

This isn’t even a true statement. Mods are human and can silence views they don’t like.

Go post some progressive and democratic views or criticize authoritarian support over on the grad.ml side. See how long it is before you’re shut down, blocked or even banned. There’s no free speech rule just because the platform is decentralized.

The only mitigating factors are that you can have a platform for opposing views, but even that isn't a guarantee here because the instance can be defederated and effectively silenced.

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[–] [email protected] 111 points 2 months ago (12 children)

Most such attempts fail when not enough people subscribe to paying tiers. Good luck to them nevertheless, I hope they succeed.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago (14 children)

Good luck to them nevertheless, I hope they succeed.

Personally, I hope the platform that welcomes Nazis crashes and burns.

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 2 months ago (25 children)

Is this not a neo-Nazi/far right platform? I only ever see them linking antivax and evropa content on Odysee. That’s where I’ve heard of it.

[–] [email protected] 81 points 2 months ago (11 children)

It isn't exclusively a Neo-Nazi platform, but it is a free-speech absolutist platform, so they have absolutely no problem platforming Nazis.

It's basically the 4chan of tube sites. All are welcome, but if you aren't a fascist you probably won't fit in.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

If one Nazi is allowed into a bar, it’s a Nazi bar. I’ll continue to steer clear.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (3 children)

something something if there's a nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 nazis

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Far right content is more common than on YouTube because of the guidelines, but in my experience the largest parts are crypto, privacy and similar, also a decent amount is gaming (at least that’s what I upload)

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (7 children)

I mirror my stuff from youtube over there and I do not fall into these categories. To be fair, I have the tiniest of audiences anyway, so... doesn't really matter either way.

Haven't checked in on Odyssee for a while though. Not sure if the auto mirror thing still works.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 2 months ago (23 children)

I used to like Odysee until I saw them clearly promote conspiracy theories and far-right, almost Nazi rhetoric on the homepage.

Guys, just because the backbone of your site is decentralized doesn't mean your centralized frontend can't be modified by you.

They never even made a single attempt to help others develop alternative frontends too, so the decentralization there was more akin to decentralization theater.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (14 children)

I think that Chandra has a point - media platforms do often devolve into ad companies, once they rely on advertisement money to survive. Because once someone is paying for a platform's continued existence, they can dictate the terms, by simply threatening to stop paying for it.

And, granted, Odysee is a Nazi and crypto bro haven, but the point still stands - let us not be fools saying "Hitler ate bread so bread bad", and ignore a message that also applies to environments that [correctly] tell the Nazi to fuck off.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 2 months ago

Good luck to them

[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 months ago (13 children)

Sure looks full of MAGA garbage. Conceptually it's a good idea, but I'll be passing since I don't need that trash in my life.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 months ago

Finally: ad-free Nazi Propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 months ago (10 children)

Isn't this the crypto bro, far right haven site? No thanks.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 months ago (16 children)

focused on free speech

Is this like…an actual commitment to free speech, or is “freeze peach” I.e. the right claiming they are being silenced online with no evidence and demanding they never be held accountable for what they say?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Unfortunately, it's probably the latter.

Executive Julian Chandra wrote to Odysee site moderators that "a Nazi that makes videos about the superiority of the white race" was not grounds for removal from Odysee.

They have actively defended far-right content, even videos that have openly called for genocide.

For balance, though, they haven't purged left wing content like some "free speech" people do (not that there's much of that there anyway)

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

TIL Odysee had ads. UBO FTW

Edit; tbf, I haven't been on it in a long long while. Generally too extremist for me.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (18 children)

That's kinda the issue for a platform like that, at least in the early stages. You'll get all the people who've been kicked off YouTube, and not the mainstream content.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago (4 children)
  1. Install watch on odysee extension.
  2. Make a odysee account
  3. Continue your normal habits of watching YouTube but being redirected to odysee when creators have posted there.
  4. hurt YouTube just a little bit.

I’m so sick of hearing that odysee is only a nazi crypto scam. That content exists on every platform but by shitting all over every option that comes out and then whining when YouTube does more anti user crap is just ridiculous.

You don't need to just use odysee. You can use YouTube for your recommendations then be redirected for the content. Eventually when recommendations are there it will be an easy transition for the majority of people but until then, at the very least don’t step on the face of a working competitor that has good intentions.

P.s. You don’t need to use the token, it was mostly just given to viewers and creators for free.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)
  1. Read stuff like this and love the idea.
  2. Never share this information anywhere.
  3. Check out the site but feel like creating an account is too much. I'm busy.
  4. Continue to never share information online.
  5. Complain about minor things on the site that I'd like improved.
  6. Hate that cool ideas never spread.
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[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Honestly, after all the shit YouTube is pulling with their ad systems, I wouldn't mind those old tiny banner strip ads that used to occasionally pop up at the bottom of a video. Compared to the current standard of 3 minutes of unskippable ads interrupting every other video, those little banners are downright unobtrusive.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago

Don't forget that ads used to be context aware instead of user aware. Which was perfect for privacy.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hell, I never minded those in theory, it was only how obnoxious they were made that was the problem.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Not familiar with Odysse, how's they're content moderation? We don't need another fascist platform.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I started digging into Odyssey some time ago when I found electro boom and big Clive were posting there. Immediately there was a lot of trash, like mostly trash. I went ahead and created an account where I could actually block content makers. I started off just blocking the wheel offensive ones anyone spouting libtards and woke. Moved into blocking clinate deniers and anti-vaxs, flat earthers. I just sit there and block 40 or 50 every time I logged in. Slowly, the content became less offensive overall. But you start running into the problem where they're all just videos from the same 30 preppers showing you how to make eggs in a $5,000 freeze dryer. I eventually started blocking the annoying and repetitive stuff. I haven't checked recently, but in its heyday the content just wasn't there even if you got rid of all the other crap you didn't want to see

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (3 children)

You had me at the ability to block content creators. The fact that YouTube doesn't have this is insane.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Nice, but the platform we need more is Peertube

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (3 children)

"free-speech" ❌ "you can say shit uncontrolably" ✅

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (4 children)

It's depressing that bleating "free speech" has become a shibboleth, betraying the speaker's tedious far right contrarianism and a wish to express it without consequence. Racists, Nazis, x-phobes, bigots of all stripes; these are your target audience when your primary objective for your platform is supposedly "free speech", especially when it's in opposition to the censorship of your users' bigotry on other platforms. I wish it weren't so, but it fucking is, 100% of the time.

It's like on reddit, when you discover a splinter sub called r/FunSubReborn or something, where they post the same content as r/FunSub, but in this "reborn" sub you can also be an unmitigated cunt in the comments and make racist or phobic remarks without getting banned.

Tedious, tiresome, clueless wankers.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago

And how will they support themselves? Another crypto scheme to battle out with SEC?

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