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"
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.
It’s free speech in a federated environment because someone can’t remove your voice.
It doesn’t obligate anyone to listen to you. So federated instances having opinions about who they talk to doesn’t contradict free speech.
People who want to talk about The Second Coming of the Space Pope are free to do so and don’t require any third party to let them do so.
Couldn’t that argument of different instances and their opinions be said about different centralised companies as well?
That’s what I said regarding starting your own instance to say what you want. I’m not sure why you felt the need to reiterate that.
And you also repeated what I said that nobody is obligated to listen to you - the instance can be defederated or admins can ban you.
So you essentially agree?
I disagree with you saying my statement isn’t true.
Any system that is centralized, and requires a third party to “allow” speech will tend to not have free speech.
My argument is regarding the idea that the fediverse faces the same issues with control of who gets to see what you say because people are people and instances controlled by people that may not like what you say can ban you or defederate.
You want to narrow the argument to centralized control, but imo that isn’t relevant to the overall premise that people tend to equate “free speech” not just to saying what you want but also people’s ability to hear it, and the fact is that even on the fediverse people are still silenced whether or not you agree with what they’re saying.
The fediverse is a thousand little moderators on a thousand little hills, its distributed decision making.
Free speech is not having anyone stopping you from having your soap box, it has nothing to do with guaranteeing you a audience, as long as those who want to listen can get to your soap box then the speech is free.
You contradict yourself.
If you cannot get an audience then nobody can “get to your soap box”. That’s akin to sending yourself an email that nobody else will see, you’re shouting to the void. The entire point of free speech is the expectation to be heard, otherwise there’s no point.
Now we’re splitting hairs. Your premise is that being heard by anyone at all is free speech, but you disregard being silenced by those that don’t want to hear you.
My premise is that being silenced by anyone is not free speech regardless of the platform or workarounds. IOW there is no absolute freedom of speech even on a decentralized platform like the fediverse. I think that’s an objective truth.
From your definition if you speak and there exists one human who cannot hear you (asleep, in a different place, or deaf) then you have no free speech because you didn’t have total distribution.
My definition is if a group of people want to talk about the space pope nobody can stop them from doing so amongst themselves.
I acknowledge we have different definitions, and i appreciate the discussion we have had, thank you for helping me see your viewpoint.
It’s not a binary choice, and that’s disingenuous to make it one.
Your second paragraph is not relevant because it excludes dissenting opinion that may not want to hear about the space pope. The anti-space pope league is not in the group of people you posit.
Thank you for the discussion.