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"
deleted by creator
I remember liking the idea of Odysee, but that turned rather quickly
Yep. Use FastLBRY, not Odysee
Edit: huh… it might be dead now?
You just made an excellent point without realizing it. #mayflies
Didn’t know about its existence but as they were proclaiming free speech that immediately sets off alarm bells. Sad to see my suspicion is once again correct.
Most of advertisers don’t care.
Thank goodness we have Lemmies ensuring no alternative tech can threaten YouTube. I was worried people might actually be against Odyssey in the comments
deleted by creator
This Lemmy community is actually more pro-mainstream than Reddit and YouTube combined. Thank you for pointing this out. Time to go.
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.
Looks like you care zilch for free speech. If you and others with this opinion cared for free speech, you would promote your own alternative ideas on those platforms to even things out, instead of whining that there’s more opposing views to yours on the platform than not.
Did you specifically skip past the past where I said they silence dissent?
But thanks for telling me what I believe.
Most such attempts fail when not enough people subscribe to paying tiers. Good luck to them nevertheless, I hope they succeed.
If anyone does want to support them, even by a small amount, and don’t have much money, I personally recommend subscribing for a month or two to the Premium+ subsciption, which is only $2.99/month. It’s all I can afford atm personally, so that’s what I’m going to be doing. They deserve support just for this action alone.
I don’t understand how that’s much different than YouTube. If you pay for YouTube then you don’t get ads either.
The point of the post is that Odysee no longer has ads. I’m not trying to say you needed the subscription to remove ads. That’s how it was previously, until today. Free users don’t see ads anymore.
The difference between YouTube Premium and Odysee Premium is mainly in it’s reason for existing. YouTube Premium exists for the sole purpose of providing features that used to be free, with some extra things that most people don’t givea hoot about and never use; and, you know… to make themselves richer. It exists so that people buy it for the value it specifically brings them.
So essentially; people buy YouTube premium for the features, while people buy Odysee Premium to support the growth of the platform, help fund the platform, and support free speech. The extra features they get are just a little bonus as thanks. Not only that, but the features Odysee provides are “Early-Access” features, which means that most, if not all of those features will become available for free users eventually. At that point, I’m not sure what Odysee Premium will provide if all the features become free; they’ll have to figure something else out to give it more incentive. But as it currently stands, Odysee Premium is more like a donation than a service; which gives you extra features as thanks.
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.
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.
I found your channel, and yeah, your latest YouTube uploads are still being synced to Odysee.
Thanks for checking :D that is pretty cool.
I mirror my stuff from youtube over there and I do not fall into these categories
Same.
And I’ve noticed that there seems to be a very small user base there.
My videos and most in my niche only get 10s of views on Odysee.
When I go browsing around outside of my niche, I tend to find quite a bit of right wing conspiracy stuff. Not really who I want to be associated with, but it’s not nearly as bad as some of the other (now failed) "free speech " video platforms that came before it.
Cool. What’s your channel? I have a gaming channel for no-commentary playthrough’s. It’s not synced from YouTube, though.
no-commentary play-throughs
🤤👌 The best content.
Honestly, I might just have to think about getting into that type if thing. I am not one for editing anyway.
Go on!
Pretty much, unfortunately. And the people who run Odysee have repeatedly, time and time again, defended Nazis, white supremacists, far-right conspiracies, videos calling for genocide, etc.
Although in fairness, to my knowledge they haven’t done what Musk has done for example and said “free speech [Unless you disagree with dear leader, then it’s an account ban]!” Left-wing content is left alone (not that there’s much of it on Odysee)
Ya that’s exactly what I would like to NOT support.
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.
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
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.
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…
Yikes. So if there weren’t laws, they would let worse stuff fly than endorsing genocide.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Most of those videos are also found on YouTube. I would expect that you don’t see those videos suggested to you because the algorithm has learned what you like to watch.
If you open up YouTube with a VPN and in a private tab you’ll likely get search results that include a mix from both the right and the left.
I’d rather not link to them, but from the ones you circled, these are the videos that I found on YouTube while doing a quick search:
- The Babylon Bee video
- The Paris Olympics opening ceremony video
- The Assassins Creed video
Now please excuse me as I purge my history…
deleted by creator
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.
I completely understand not wanting to see that there, and you don’t have to see it, and besides, I see that all over YouTube too when I’m not signed in receiving good recommendations based on what I like.
I suggest reading my comment response to YTG123 (which is the other person who just replied to you), since you probably weren’t notified of it. Sorry to not reply directly, but I understandably don’t want to write another few hundred words, and the comment is relevant to you.
Thank you for this reasonable response.
Perhaps when things mature, I’ll give it another look. YouTube for me, when not signed in, does not have the sheer plethora of MAGA nonsense like this site does. Maybe it’s some regional algorithm, I don’t know, though I live in the south where MAGA idiocy runs rampant.
I take the path of least resistance when it comes to filtering out lies and garbage from my life. For now it’s simpler for me to just not browse the site than to weed out such content.
Internet is full of MAGA garbage. Bittorrent DHT is full of MAGA garbage. What’s your point? There are ways to filter out what you don’t want to see.
If you can’t see the point, then I cannot help you.
I can see it, I just want you to spell it out that you are a fascist douchebag (everyone who wants to censor other opinions is that).
So…being anti-MAGA makes me fascist. Got it. And I never once said I wanted to censor opinions. Stop making shit up, you sound like a MAGA moron.
Good lord, they’re everywhere. Literal morons, everywhere.
Good lord, they’re everywhere. Literal morons, everywhere.
Its worse than that, maga are literal terrorists at this point, and supporting a convicted criminal trying to elect him king so he can get away with all those crimes, makes them partially culpable for all his crimes
If you can’t see the point, then I cannot help you.
That’s you.
Which other point can be made then?
If there’s a system containing MAGA stuff, but you won’t see it if you don’t want to, it’s as fine for any situation as a system without MAGA stuff for any goal which is not censorship of MAGA stuff.
Not familiar with Odysse, how’s they’re content moderation? We don’t need another fascist platform.
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
You had me at the ability to block content creators. The fact that YouTube doesn’t have this is insane.
YouTube has a “Don’t recommend this channel” option. Which, as far as I can tell, does actually get them to stop recommending the channel on the main recommended feed. If you’re subscribed they’ll still show up in your subscriptions and will still show up in search if you look for them (to the extent that anything relevant shows up in search).
The option isn’t prominent, it’s in the “3-dot” menu next to a video on the recommended feed and I’ve been unable to find a way to view or manage the list of blocked channels, but it’s there.
Edit: a word - “able” to “unable”
Yeah, this is an option on YouTube.
On Odysee, there’s both the option to “Block” channels, or seperately “Mute” channels. You can also manage your blocked and muted channels separately under Profile > Settings > Content Settings > Blocked and muted channels. According to this page in the official Help Hub:
Blocking: “When you block a user, the blocked user can no longer comment on any of your content, channel, or comment threads. In addition to this, all comments and reactions left by the blocked user on your content, channel, or in the comments section, will be filtered for everyone.”
Muting: “When you mute a user, you will no longer see them in any comment sections, replies, search results, homepage, related content, or anywhere else. They’re hidden from your experience on Odysee.”
So basically, if you don’t want to see their content (including comments); mute them. If you don’t want them to talk to you or be seen in your own channels’ comment sections by both yourself or others; block them. If you want absolutely nothing to do with them, you can both block and mute them simultaneously. Note: The article shows how to block/mute them from within the comments section. You can also block/mute them from the channel page itself or by clicking the 3-dots beside their video thumnail.
u don’t want them to talk to you or be seen in your own channels’ comment sections by both yourself or others; block them. If you want absolutely nothing to do with them, you can both block and mute them simultaneously. Note: The article shows how to block/mute them from within the comments section. You can also block/mute them from the channel page itself or by clicking the 3-dots beside their video thumnail.
I did that, took me a couple weeks. There were a handful of content creators left.
Yeah, I find that since so many people watch such different content from each other, it means that whether or not the content on a smaller platform like Odysee is actually interesting to people, tends to be hit or miss. It still needs more growth fix that issue. I still watch a lot of YouTube though, and Odysee has their own official extension which allows you to choose to either redirect YouTube links to Odysee (if the same video officially exists there), or show a “Watch on Odysee” button right YouTube’s “Subscribe” button.
I noticed there wasn’t enough gameplay videos of the games that I like, and hardly any game soundtracks uploaded, so I started uploading my full game playthrough’s and game OST’s to a couple of channels for the people who also have my taste in videos. Oh yeah, fun fact: You can also have multiple channels on the same account and quickly switch between them. It’s pretty cool. The extension even lets you transfer your subs over from YT.
how’s they’re content moderation
go there, you’ll see it immediately… loads of maga terrorist garbage
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.
- Install watch on odysee extension.
- Make a odysee account
- Continue your normal habits of watching YouTube but being redirected to odysee when creators have posted there.
- 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.
- Read stuff like this and love the idea.
- Never share this information anywhere.
- Check out the site but feel like creating an account is too much. I’m busy.
- Continue to never share information online.
- Complain about minor things on the site that I’d like improved.
- Hate that cool ideas never spread.
❤️
I’m so sick of hearing that odysee is only a nazi crypto scam.
It’s like 98% uncontrolled extremist garbage. I can take or leave the crypto but the actual content is just so awful. We have better options.
Exactly. Another awesome thing the extension provides is the ability to migrate all your YouTube subscriptions over to Odysee. You also have two options with the Watch on Odysee extension. You can 1: Make YouTube links immediately redirect to Odysee (default option), or 2: Have a “Watch on Odysee” button appear to the left of the subscribe button on every YouTube video that also exists on Odysee (Example screenshot). Choosing the latter option means you don’t need to disable the extension every time you want to comment on a YouTube video.
Another thing people keep doing is acting like Odysee is a free speech absolutist platform, in that they allow you to say and post absolutely anything. This is not true, because they have community guidelines which do not allow hate speech and promotion of violence (two examples). It’s just less strict and more fair in it’s moderation practices than YouTube.
Some Links: Firefox extension (can’t find it for Chrome, for some reason); Community Guidelines
Edit: If you want the extension on Chrome, you can get it directly from GitHub. You may need to view a guide if you don’t know how to install extensions manually.
I was a big fan of odysee but once LBRY lost to the SEC I figured it would die or change horribly. Im not sure who owns odysee now, how hosting works on it now that LBRY has been dissolved, or whos mining rigs are running the decentralized lbry blockchain that still presumably powers odysee. I need to know the details in clear detail before I trust it again on a technical level. I am more skeptical of crypto now and think a paid patreon membership peertube instance may be the best way to go. Peertubes biggest issue is scaling hosting cost as it gets bigger and donations can’t keep up as well as lifetime of an instance. If I host my videos on your site and a year later it goes dark or they were deleted because the server maintainer just didn’t want them taking up space, thats kind fustrating.
r they were deleted because the server maintainer just didn’t want them taking up space, thats kind frustrating.
Yeah, the onus is on us to keep the backups and perhaps reseed if necessary. The whole part where Youtube is a massive free unlimited hosting library is not sustainable eventually. Crypto has always been a grift with a variable lifespan, it just funds the services while it’s in it’s bubble.
Odysee was owned by LBRY before the LBRY company was dissolved. They were founded by the same team of people who created the LBRY company, and the LBRY network/protocol (the decentralised part), but are not themselves the same company. So the LBRY company going away was never going to dissolve Odysee also, which is why they still exist today. LBRY (the company) dissolving did not affect the content on Odysee because the LBRY network/protocol itself is open-source and decentralised; and LBRY being sued and dying does not somehow make the LBRY network/protocol illegal for Odysee (or anyone) to use. If Odysee had gone away, anyone else could have jumped in and made a new replacement frontend for the LBRY network/protocol (Odysee is a frontend for LBRY, after all).
About a month ago, Odysee announced that they would be moving away from the LBRY network over to the Arweave network. Now, I’m not sure when they are going to do this, but it appears that at the minute they are still using the LBRY network/protocol for content uploads. The reason I think they are still using LBRY at this very minute, is that when I uploaded a video to my Odysee channel yesterday, I noticed in my personal uploads page that it was still using the lbry:// at the beginning of it’s address on the network.
How… How are they gonna pay for bandwidth if there aren’t any ads?
They also earn money from the optional premium subscriptions, the 5% cut from channel donations, and 100% of the donations sent directly to them. The way the direct donations work is by going to a video, and just below it, clicking the “$ Support” button and making the donation either via cash or LBC. That’s an option for all channels on the platform.
Otherwise, I don’t know the ins-and-outs of how the decentralised blockchain system works, but they do not have to host all of the sites content themselves, as it is also voluntarily hosted by other users. I’m not sure how this works at the moment; it previously worked by being a user of the LBRY Desktop app, but after the LBRY company shut down, and the LBRY app went away, I’m not sure how other people host the pieces of that content anymore. They are moving away from the LBRY blockchain protocol, over to the Arweave protocol, so I imagine they will bring out an Arweave app that may replace the LBRY app which that was used previously.
I just synced my youtube channel with odysee… Yeah a bunch of alt right trash is floating around but the only way to change that is to drown it out with actual content. The more normal content uploaded the less breathing room for the outrageous bullshit in feeds. Hopefully my library helps.
Awesome! What’s your channel?
Unfortunately I can’t share it on this account but it’s a channel for the maker community and related tools :P
Cool, yeah that’s fair enough. I was unsure about sharing my own channel here too, considering I’m very careful about my privacy.
Ditto lol I spent a long time changing accounts and setting up new ones to have a unified handle across the net I can just share my real opinions about lol gotta keep it up it’s hard work out here.
Iv been using odysee for a couple years and never had an ad on the ios or android app. Nor in the browser. (In video sponsors dont count). Odysee ftw i much prefer when creators i watch use youtube and a alternative platform like odysee
Yes, I just remembered that I’m pretty sure the F-Droid version of the app on Android doesn’t contain ads, because F-Droid probably didn’t allow it; while the Google Play version did contain ads. I’m not sure why they didn’t appear on your iPhone though, I don’t have one to test that.
How do creators generate income? Is it just Patreon type stuff? YouTube is probably one of the few services I actually don’t hate using other than its terrible algorithm.
I’ve never cared to generate income on my own channel, so I’m not sure how all of it works. But the main way that I know of is through channel tips. There’s a ($ Support) button below every channel and content upload, which lets you directly tip the creator. You can use Patreon or anything else if you want to, but the functionality is built in. Odysee gets a 5% cut of all the tips sent to channels. There may be other ways of making money, but I’m not aware of what they might be.
Edit: Heres’s their help page about monetization: https://help.odysee.tv/category-monetization/
This is extremely helpful! Thank you for the insight.
They served ads before? My librewolf didn’t showed them tho
Nice! Yeah, I use LibreWolf too and never saw them. I started using the mobile app recently which didn’t block ads though. I found them a bit annoying because the mobile app is very unoptimised atm, so the ads being there just made things worse.
The way they worked previously was that they would appear in the apps interface. They wouldn’t play within the video’s themselves, and a small advertisement would pop up at the bottom of the screen which you could cross-off manually.
deleted by creator
Good on you. I plan to pay for Mullvad VPN too when I can afford it again; with Monero too. Didn’t know it had an internal ad-blocker for mobile though, that’s awesome.
If you connect with openvpn you can add their custom adblocking dns to config and block everything on pc too, better yet, install openwrt on your router and install mullvad on it though openvpn with their custom dns server, they have in app adblocker too, if you use mullvad app
I had plans to use Quad9 on my router when I get home WiFi back, and using Mullvad DNS on my Android phone, which Mullvad also blocks app trackers.
With the setup you’re suggesting, does this make the VPN be “built-in” to the router and extend the VPN service to all devices connected to it?
Yes, you can install vpn to router however, i did not tried yet, I’ve tried to share calyx vpn and it refused to, but i think with mullvad it’s going to be okay since they have official guides how to https://mullvad.net/en/help/openwrt-routers-and-mullvad-vpn , I’m in the process of modding my router right now so it’s going to take some time before i can test it, it have 18.04 version of openwrt and but compiled recent version, also ram and rom chips got to be upgraded to use it properly, today i upgraded ram, but for rom chip, i gotta read memory dump and write it to new chip so I’ll do that later
Thanks for all your suggestions mate. I’m going to favourite your comment so I can come back to it at some point to remind myself to look into them.
Edit: Hold on, why did you delete your comment that I replied “Good on you” to? I can’t remember what it said now. All I know about it is that you said you pay for Mullvad VPN with Monero, and that that it had an adblocker.
