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"
Does it have an android app?
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.
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.
I stopped looking into Odysee after I heard LBRY was shutting down. There doesn’t seem to be much transparency on what the future of the site is. Also echoing the concern that some have already raised, the complete lack of moderation is a double edged sword that seems to have fostered a home for right-wing extremists.
How… How are they gonna pay for bandwidth if there aren’t any ads?
Most such attempts fail when not enough people subscribe to paying tiers. Good luck to them nevertheless, I hope they succeed.
Good luck to them nevertheless, I hope they succeed.
Personally, I hope the platform that welcomes Nazis crashes and burns.
Reading your comments is Nazis Nazis Nazis. I think you need some help.
Alright snowflake
Let the hate flow through you.
Freedom goes both ways. I hate nazis, but it’s better to have their bullshit out in the open to be criticized, than have them group up on shady underground places that would only make it worse.
I agree with you but so few people think so today. They think censorship is the answer because if they don’t see it, they feel better and can forget it exists.
Freedom of speech also means noone is obligated to listen to bullshit.
Absolutely fucking not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
The Nazis already put their ideas out on the open, and we saw what happened.
The opposite is “the illusion of safety because of moderated platforms”. One might think a platform that removes fake news would only have real news, but that’s obviously not the case and creates an even worse landscape.
Just because moderating platforms to eliminate Nazis only drives them to build their own spaces doesn’t make deplatforming them the wrong move. I prefer them existing in the fringes rather than being accepted into the mainstream.
Tolerance for Nazis is only possible if you are ignorant of history, or if you are actively evil. “Stupid or Evil?” Isn’t a great place to exist, but I have to conclude one way or the other every time I run into this “why don’t we just hear the Nazis out?” narrative…
We know enough about Nazis already to tell them to go fuck themselves before they even open their mouths. Giving them a voice is an act of violence.
You’re doing the same as what others are trying to do to any open platform. You’re claiming that me trying to defend absolute freedom of speech is the same as me asking why we don’t hear them out. And as long as you believe that is the same, I’d rather not waste time discussing this.
Absolute freedom of speech goes both ways, indefinitely. If a platform is too heavily moderated and hides stuff like this, not only does it create the illusion that it does not exist, it also sets a precedent for abuse by the platform owners. The biggest example at the moment is how Musk uses X to suppress arguments that don’t fit his narrative.
Filter bubbles are a very new concept and are much worse than coming across people spreading hatred and being able to tell them to suck it.
claiming that me trying to defend absolute freedom of speech is the same as me asking why we don’t hear them out.
On privately operated online social spaces, that’s exactly what you’re asking.
Absolute freedom of speech goes both ways, indefinitely.
That’s why free speech absolutism is a stupid idea that doesn’t make sense.
The biggest example at the moment is how Musk uses X to suppress arguments that don’t fit his narrative.
You think the biggest threat to free speech is Elon Musk moderating Twitter like an idiot? You and I are clearly not worried about the same things in regards to suppression of speech…
Fuck no.
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.
Profits for big tech is never enough, and they will raise prices and introduce more ads forever. This is because in modern economy, having a quarter where the profits don’t grow is punished severely on the stock market.
The difference is your favorite channel won’t be destroyed by a corporate abusing copyright strike, they won’t have to self-censor themselves from saying fuck or shit. A platform making money from ads means every content creator on that platform is a slave to the advertisers
My favorite channel wouldn’t have millions of subscribers and a somewhat steady recurring income because of this.
It’s a classic catch 22: Without viewers, no content creators. Without content creators, no viewers.
I think it’s great that they try to get rid of what makes YouTube suck but I don’t see that content creators are leaving YouTube anywhere soon.
They don’t need to leave YouTube at all. That’s because Odysee provides a YouTube sync feature, that syncs every upload from YouTube with the Odysee channel. They can set the sync and never touch Odysee again if they want to. Plus, if we collectively ask our favourite YouTubers to join Odysee, and actually make them realise that Odysee exists, more of them will eventually join. Once more have joined, it will be easier to convince even more YouTubers to join again. The cycle continues, and Odysee grows.
I’m sorry to be the guy that tried to ruin your party, but “if we collectively…”… How many people are you talking about?
100, 1000, 10000, 100000 ?
This is business. We’re talking about someone’s livelihood. Peace on earth is nice but it doesn’t guarantee food on your table.
Syncing is an alternative as long as it doesn’t mean that a view pays less on Odyssee than on YouTube. If it does, then the creator would not gain anything, just kidding income.
What is your selling argument for a YouTube creator with 100000 views on average to move to Odyssee?
I’m sorry to be the guy that tried to ruin your party, but “if we collectively…”… How many people are you talking about?
100, 1000, 10000, 100000 ?
As many people as are willing to do it. If you’re not; that’s fine; I’m not telling anyone they have to; it’s just an encouragement.
Syncing is an alternative as long as it doesn’t mean that a view pays less on Odyssee than on YouTube. If it does, then the creator would not gain anything, just kidding income.
Syncing is up to the YouTuber, it’s not hard to do, and requires no channel management after initially set up. They may not have a reason, depending on who they are, but it’s better to get some people on board with it than none.
What is your selling argument for a YouTube creator with 100000 views on average to move to Odyssee?
There is no “selling” point other than that it’s easy to set up and may earn them some extra cash, even if it’s not much in comparison to their YouTube pay. Other than that, there’s the fact that YouTube false copyright claims videos all the time, and if the YouTuber can’t get their video back up, their viewers can still at least view it through Odysee where the synced video did not get removed. If the channel is automatically taken down by false copyright issues, as has happened before, the video’s aren’t suddenly lost forever. Not all YouTubers keep a backup of all their videos on their own drives, and if their channel is taken down completely, “bye bye content”. I’m not trying to say that these reasons are much for most YouTubers, but with dozens of millions of YouTubers out there making good money, there are bound to be at least hundreds of thousands of them who would sync with Odysee if they knew about it.
they won’t have to self-censor themselves from saying fuck or shit
…or “non-white people are degenerate inferiors”.
Fuck Odysee.
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.
You’re reading obnoxious levels of goodwill into the actions of a company that doesn’t deserve it. This is just the video platform equivalent of “critical support to Russia.”
TIL Odysee had ads. UBO FTW
Edit; tbf, I haven’t been on it in a long long while. Generally too extremist for me.
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.
Very true! Lemmy wasn’t super like that, but then again, reddit allowed nearly anything (apparently including csam to a certain degree). Then the API debacle, and that crap came here. Yt is more strict on certain things, which pushes those scourges of society to these platforms that are in their early stages, giving them an abysmal reputation.
Yeah, there wasn’t much that didn’t fly on Reddit, and banning a subreddit usually meant those users spread their bile elsewhere on the platform. The platform was self policing to an extent, in the fact that anyone too extreme became a topic of mockery elsewhere and weren’t really taken seriously.
I mean Lenny was like that though. After the exodus from Reddit most major instances defederated from hexbear which is like the OG Lemmy instance
Lemmy got like that after the exodus. No? I mean, I saw some BS here and there, but not nearly as much as right before the hexbear nonsense. Granted, I wasn’t on here much, and using a now defunct username, but I still didn’t see nearly as much.
Lemmy sort of started with people that got banned from Reddit
You can get banned from reddit?? That doesn’t bode well haha
You can get randomly banned on reddit.
Yeah, just endorse punching Nazis, a friend of mine got banned from Reddit for that.
I got perma-banned from a (mainstream, ordinary) sub for — and I’m really not joking here — criticising the “Caravan of Death”, which was a fascist death squad used by Chilean dictator Pinochet to assassinate political opponents in 1973.
I asked the mod team if they could specify the rule I broke, and then clearly they asked a Reddit admin to block my entire account, because that’s what happened.
Maybe I could appeal and get the account back, but I don’t really care that much.
This is ahistorical. The original Lemmy instance is lemmy.ml, and it was hugely tankie literally from the beginning - the .ml referring to marxist-leninism, years before Reddit’s API changes. It’s nothing to do with people being banned from Reddit, it’s just that the concept of a federated message board platform was appealing to communist software developers, who created and guided the project. If anything, the anti-tankie sentiment which is popular on instances like lemmy.world is what came to lemmy after the Reddit exodus.
Tankies have never really been regularly banned on Reddit in any real extent.
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.
r/TrueUnpopularOpinion, r/TrueOffMyChest, r/GoodAnimemes (that sub was made after r/Animemes mods stated that “trap” was a slur, which made a bunch of manchildren angry who went to go make their own sub, so you can immediately guess how much of a misogynistic porn-oriented hellhole it is)
The mods are still wrong.
Trap is a slur, especially used often by weebs. Describing gender non-conforming characters who look feminine as “traps”, including many canonically non-binary and woman characters, is pretty fucked up when you think about it. To them, “traps” and genderqueer people in general are sex objects, not characters with respectable identities. Most of the weebs that throw that word around are also the ones to do trans erasure, like denying that a character is transgender or otherwise gender non-conforming, instead treating any character implied not to be AFAB as a man; and then often ironically going crazy defending it as “not gay” because that’d be bad – there’s a reason “traps aren’t gay” is a meme, and it’s an unironically defended position by these people. They convince themselves it’s not gay by reducing queer people & characters down to sex objects, things to masturbate to, rather than people. If you don’t see them as an equal person, it’s not gay or immoral, is how they process it. Obviously they won’t say that explicitly if you ask them though, they’ll just say it’s not gay because being attracted to things that look like women is straight or something.
That’s why it’s used a shit ton in, you know, porn. Not just hentai, but actual real porn. Usually in place of “bitch”, “whore”, or some other word used to dehumanize women. They’re used in the same derogatory manner. It’s pretty disturbing when men use “bitch” or “whore” to refer to women and female characters, it’s dehumanizing. And it’d be pretty disturbing to well-adjusted people if someone described anyone feminine genderqueer as “a trap”, but this is a slur that weebs are fine using amongst themselves.
You would think those people wouldn’t equate anime characters with real people, but this mentality transfers between fiction and nonfiction unfortunately. Often times the way you feel about character identities in media is representative of the way you feel about the identities of real people – just look at the backlash of the gamergate people about the woke “ruining games and movies” by putting minorities and women in them.
Now, I’m not saying everyone who’s ever used the word “trap” is a bigot or anything. People use words without realizing the way others see it, and the impact it has. I used it in my weeb phase. But undeniably, “trap” is a derogatory word and a slur used to objectify queer people, and it always has been – it originated in 4channers & internet weirdos getting mad over trans people being at gaming events, posting pictures and labelling them “traps” (“they’re trying to trick you into thinking they’re a woman to trap you into having sex with them, when they’re really not a woman”). It’s no different than other slurs for queer people (like “fag” or “sodomite”). It’s harmful and shouldn’t be used. Persistence on using it shows a lack of respect for queer people and their identities.
Yeah it really does seem this way.
I’ve never been a “free speech absolutist”. I acknowledge that censorship is problematic, but it seems much less so than the alternative.
- 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.
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.
Odysee is is one of the few alternative platforms with a decent left wing audience. The only other majority progressive platforms are Mastodon and Lemmy, though Lemmy has a lot of neo-progressive tankies and angry conservative tankies.
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
- 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.
❤️
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I remember liking the idea of Odysee, but that turned rather quickly
Most of advertisers don’t care.
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.
Thank goodness we have Lemmies ensuring no alternative tech can threaten YouTube. I was worried people might actually be against Odyssey in the comments
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Just a thing to think about, free speech is always going to appeal to Nazis, just as it should for most other people. Freedom of speech in the American sense where certain speech is not protected (such as screaming fire in a movie theater when there is no fire) is a right that we should continue to attempt to protect, even from people we disagree with (within reason, as mentioned above).
Sure. And Nazism is a direct threat not protected by freedom of expression.
I don’t disagree in the slightest, hopefully you understood what I meant though.
We understood, it just didn’t contribute anything and appeared to actively defend nazis.
Lol k
(such as screaming fire in a movie theater when there is no fire)
This idiom comes from an analogy in a SCOTUS opinion arguing that checks notes it’s a violation of the Espionage Act to distribute flyers that oppose the draft. That case was later partly overturned in Brandenburg v Ohio and the standard is that speech isn’t incitement unless it is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. To the point that “$SLUR should hang from trees” is probably protected speech (because the lawless action isn’t imminent), but “you guys, grab that $SLUR over there so we can string them up!” probably isn’t.
So defending free speech inevitably means defending white supremacists and the like because free speech doesn’t actually protect anything if it doesn’t protect upsetting, outrageous, or offensive speech (and likewise, the arbiter of what counts as offensive is not guaranteed to always be on your side). It’s why the ACLU has defended them on more than one occasion. H.L. Mencken put it best.
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” ― H.L. Mencken
screaming fire in a movie theater when there is no fire
This scenario always reminds me of the very first part of this speech on free speech from Christopher Hitchens.
You know that’s exactly what people say about Mastadon and in some cases Lemmy right?
This Lemmy community is actually more pro-mainstream than Reddit and YouTube combined. Thank you for pointing this out. Time to go.
Yep. Use FastLBRY, not Odysee
Edit: huh… it might be dead now?
You just made an excellent point without realizing it. #mayflies
That’s great, now remove all your bloat and spyware.
What bloat/spyware?
Then they would need to bring back ads
ngl i should also post my yt videos on peertube and odysee
ngl you should 😂
I don’t know if PeerTube has the option, but with Odysee, there’s an option to automatically sync your existing YouTube channel with Odysee. It will bring over the video, the description, and will be uploaded in full quality; the comment section will be separate though, so the comments on Odysee are by Odysee users themselves.
ok that is life saving peertube its hard finding a server
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.
Good, ads sucks.
“All ads are removed” is written at the top of the site, directly under an ad.
Seems like that it’s only a banner of the own platform incentivos people to purchase memberships do the video creators can make money