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"

  • EnderWiggin@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 month ago

      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/

  • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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    1 month ago

    TIL Odysee had ads. UBO FTW

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

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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        1 month ago

        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.

        • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          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.

        • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          I mean Lemmy was like that though. After the exodus from Reddit most major instances defederated from hexbear which is like the OG Lemmy instance

          • sandbox@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            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.

          • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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            1 month ago

            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.

                • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  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.

  • nullpotential@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    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.

  • Sol 6 VI StatCmd@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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.

        • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 month ago

          Cool, yeah that’s fair enough. I was unsure about sharing my own channel here too, considering I’m very careful about my privacy.

          • Sol 6 VI StatCmd@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            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.

  • Eiri@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    How… How are they gonna pay for bandwidth if there aren’t any ads?

  • 58008@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 month ago

      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.

    • sparkle@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      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)

        • sparkle@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          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.

          This problem is made worse by the fact that generic animes started to play into this, that is, they created “trap” tropes (with a lot of objectified/token otokonoko or josoko characters popping up because weebs like it).

          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 (or just plain ignorance of) genderqueer people and their identities.

  • Howdy@lemmy.zip
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    1 month ago

    Legitimately first time hearing about Odysee… Impressed, this could actual be a YouTube replacement.

    • Zennyker@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Seems like that it’s only a banner of the own platform incentivos people to purchase memberships do the video creators can make money

    • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 month ago

      They officially announced they were switching to the Arweave protocol in a post a little under a month ago, but I’m not sure if it’s happened yet; haven’t looked further into it yet, and it was revealed by other sources a little while prior to that.

      • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I was curious what Arweave was, so I went to their site.

        Turns out it’s yet another crypto scheme.

        I was though this statement on their landing page was particularly funny:

        The Arweave protocol is stable, mature and widely adopted.

  • nevemsenki@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

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

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Good luck to them nevertheless, I hope they succeed.

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

      • x00z@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        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.

          • x00z@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            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.

            • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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              1 month ago

              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.

              • x00z@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                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.

                • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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                  1 month ago

                  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…

        • 1984@lemmy.today
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          1 month ago

          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.

    • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I don’t understand how that’s much different than YouTube. If you pay for YouTube then you don’t get ads either.

        • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 month ago

          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.

          • WldFyre@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            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.”

        • Melt@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          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

          • mindlight@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            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.

            • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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              1 month ago

              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.

              • mindlight@lemm.ee
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                1 month ago

                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?

                • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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                  1 month ago

                  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.

        • 1984@lemmy.today
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          1 month ago

          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.

  • SteveFromMySpace@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 month ago

    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?

    • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 month ago

      Are you seriously telling me that you think videos on YouTube and other mainstream platforms aren’t being censored? People need to stop calling it a “right” platform. People of all political ideologies are on the platform, you are just picking out the stuff you don’t like; the platform isn’t even political or meant for that purpose; it’s meant for all forms of content creation.

      Why do you think they have the categories in their sidebar, "Pop Culture; Artists; Education; Lifestyle; Spooky; Gaming; Tech; Comedy; Music; Sports; Universe; Finance 2.0; Spirituality; News & Politics; Wild West – in that order… Notice Politics is second last?

      • SteveFromMySpace@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 month ago

        I didn’t call it anything, I’m asking. I never said YouTube was a free speech platform. In fact I didn’t say anything about YouTube.

        Please read what I wrote again. “Free speech” is a very loaded term now online so I was seeking clarification on what “free speech” means to them. It was a genuine question that is warranted when browsing online in 2024.

        • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 month ago

          Sorry… I apologise for the misunderstanding and mini-rant.

          You appeared to me to be asking a rhetorical question in a sarcastic manner and implying that they aren’t really committed to free speech, and the reason I was frustrated was because I’m quite sick of this platform being labelled as right/far-right when it isn’t. YouTube was just an example one mainstream platform that censors content.

          If you’d like to see an example of how committed they are to free speech, I can’t really easily provide a direct source to a question that broad, but I do recommend taking a look at some of LBRY’s earliest posts on Odysee which you’ll find will highlight some of their original goals and vision (LBRY is the protocol Odysee used to use, and Odysee was created by the same team as LBRY). Otherwise, maybe just take a look around the platform, and try to see what kind of opinion or political-related content is on the platform that you don’t tend to see on others which have greater censorship.

          Edit: Accidentally commented early, so had to edit it to finish typing. Edit 2: Clarified info about who LBRY is.

          • SteveFromMySpace@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 month ago

            I’ll be mindful of my wording in the future. I want to reiterate that this was a genuine question.

            I do think if a lot of people are telling you the site is right wing then maybe you should take a broader look around. You don’t have to be participating in that garbage for it to be occurring.

            • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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              1 month ago

              Well I know there’s a lot of right-wing content on there, but I also know there’s a lot of other content there, too. So I don’t think it’s okay when people call it a “right-wing” platform, just because it appears to have more of it on there compared to other platforms.

              • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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                1 month ago

                The creators of the site allow Nazi content and say that doesn’t break their terms of service. On every other site, Nazism and promoting that ideology is not allowed.

                This is what you are arguing for. A site that differentiates itself from other video hosting platforms by giving Nazis a safe space.

                • jet@hackertalks.com
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                  1 month ago

                  While we are at it, lets cancel the postal service since they allow Nazi’s to send newsletters.

              • IdleSheep@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                1 month ago

                Why is it not okay to call it what it is? If you openly allow nazis into your site, you have a nazi site. I’m sorry but there’s just no way around it.

                Either you nip that garbage in the bud or your site is overrun by far right nut jobs, which is what happened with odysee.

                Of course nobody wants to use the site. Why would they?

                It’s the nazi bar problem. You allow one nazi to enter your bar, then that nazi brings his nazi friends, and before you notice it you have a nazi bar and no one wants to visit.

                Odysee doesn’t “appear” to have more right wing content, it objectively does. The majority of people who migrate to it are wackos who got banned in other places for their extremist views.

      • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Are you seriously telling me that you think videos on YouTube and other mainstream platforms aren’t being censored?

        No, they never said anything like that. Read the comment you’re responding to again.

      • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        Can you recommend me more than a few hardcore leftist content creators exclusively releasing content on Odyssee?

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Unfortunately, it’s 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.

        • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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          Because good people aren’t free speech absolutists, because we understand the danger of leaving violent or dishonest ideas unchallenged.

          Anyone who thinks Nazism is an idea worthy of consideration is just a Nazi. That argument was concluded in 1945, and the only people revisiting it are people who want a different conclusion.

      • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        Do they also suppress left/socialist content?

        If they did, then yeah it’s a shit service.

        I am by no means defending Nazi content. But if they are allowing any speech, I’d say this is closer to being “free speech” than Twitter currently is.

        • Telorand@reddthat.com
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          1 month ago

          Speech doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and all ideas aren’t equal. The libertarian idea of absolute free speech is a half-baked notion that holds that Nazi philosophies are equal to Humanist philosophies, and they each deserve the same megaphone and chance to thrive.

          Fuck. That. And fuck anyone who thinks that or platforms Nazis. Libertarian free speech is a myth that only benefits Nazis and other bad actors.

        • x00z@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Yes, it goes both ways. And they aren’t using the platform to push any of their personal believes either.

  • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    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.

    • Imperor@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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        1 month ago

        Cool. What’s your channel? I have a gaming channel for no-commentary playthrough’s. It’s not synced from YouTube, though.

      • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        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.

    • parpol@programming.dev
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      I sure haven’t seen any far right videos on there. My suggestions are always open source, linux, science, mental outlaw and Louis Rossman.

      If there is far right content, it definitely is filtered away if you don’t watch similar content. I checked out the featured tab just now and didn’t find anything remotely political.

        • Eezyville@sh.itjust.works
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          I’m there because some of my favorite streamers, like MentalOutlaw, are there. I know there will be people who hold an opinion or view that i disagree with but the same is true here. I’m not saying that there is hate speech here but i can’t expect every site i visit to be sunshines and rainbows just for me.

        • parpol@programming.dev
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          OK, the 3d to 5d consciousness video is conspiracy bullshit by some religious nutjob, that is for sure. And the comments in that video seemed to shit on the creator, so it is not like people are agreeing with it. I agree it is insane.

          But the rest of the videos you’ll have to explain to me what makes them far-right, and racist, because they just seemed typically conservative to me, and some of the points made sense. For example, thinking the Olympics opening ceremony was boring and overall bad doesn’t make you far right.

          Now, I just skimmed over the videos so I might have missed something, but I saw nothing that would for example get you banned on youtube. Maybe they’d get you false copyright struck for showing the Olympics opening ceremony because apparently that’s been happening to critics on youtube, so I understand why they would rather post it on odysee.

          The assassins creed video is just plain true. I’m not conservative, but I do live in Japan, and there is definitely anger over the cultural appropriation and misrepresentation of Japanese history. The video summarizes the points but nothing stated is far-right.

          Babylon bee has been called “far-right” by the NYT at one point, but it was then amended and they apologized, so as far as I know, it is another typical conservative news media and mostly satire. I skimmed over this video too, but didn’t see anything far-right in it. It seemed to be about censorship, and had some fair points to be honest.

          So to summarize, They’re conservative, and I don’t agree with all of the points, but they’re not far-right. Except for that conspiracy nutjob video, none of these need to be removed from any platform.

        • NotAnotherLemmyUser@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          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…

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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        If one Nazi is allowed into a bar, it’s a Nazi bar. I’ll continue to steer clear.

      • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 month ago

        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

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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            I don’t really think that’s true, so long as you stay off the tankie instance. I have it blocked.

            • parpol@programming.dev
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              1 month ago

              Well, LBRY which odysee is a frontend for is decentralized, so you can host your own odysee-like instance and block content on there almost the same way as you can host one here and defederate. So it’s not that different from Lemmy. It is all decentralized after all.

      • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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        1 month ago

        I ain’t a fascist, Neo-Nazi, far-rightist, or any of the things Odysee is falsely marked by people as being, and I fit in just fine with my fellow Odysee users. Stop attacking one of the only companies who are truly trying to be the change they want to see in the world.

          • parpol@programming.dev
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            1 month ago

            Banned users from other platforms are welcome with open arms on Odysee

            That’s how bans work. You are not supposed to be banned on platforms where you haven’t violated any rules. Getting banned on YouTube for saying something controversial on Twitter is not right.

          • parpol@programming.dev
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            1 month ago

            Nothing about the LBRY token was a scam. You just hate cryptocurrency. Who needs literally the only form of decentralized online currency, right?

          • parpol@programming.dev
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            1 month ago

            “If you allow a nazi to drink in your bar, even if it’s just one, you’re a nazi bar.” Is such a shit take, considering you’re at a communist bar.

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            1 month ago

            I agree with most of your points, but “anti physically and mentally disabled”? Really? Your source describes how they reuploaded unsubtitled lectures for the sake of preservation. This is hardly a villanous move and has nothing to do with “not caring about deaf people”. Let’s keep the arguments honest, you have plenty else to stick them with that’s actually substantial.

            • parpol@programming.dev
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              Even the rest just boils down to “these people say that they’re nazis, so it must be true” and “nazis are bad. If you give them fair treatment, you’re one yourself.”

              And when it comes to these nazis/white supremacists, I am willing to bet what labelled them as such was criticizing some DEI, or maybe complaining about “wokeness” which is far from the Heiling skinhead that people associate with nazis.

              It is so hard to trust a single word of anyone nowadays that describes people as nazis. I’d be fine with taking back this statement if the actual videos/posts/whatever from the so called nazis were posted here so that I could see for myself, rather than what some traditional news media has to say about them.

              I was posting in another subthread about this too. The front page on Odysee had some conservatives videos, and one crazy 5d energy conspiracy video, but none of the videos brought up were far-right or white supremacist, but they sure were circled and pointed out as such.

      • x00z@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        To be honest, I’ve been using the website and I notice nothing of this. I can click a few links and get to said content, yes, but my feed and some of the categories I check are on par with YouTube. The only big difference I experience is that there’s much more content of smaller content creators.

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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      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]!”

    • wewbull@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      There may be content generators on there you can label that way, but that doesn’t make the platform neo-nazi.

      You take all of the stuff excluded from a big platform and put it on a small platform, and it’ll swamp every other topic out. If as a platform runner you feel that you should not censor others, then this can happen.

      On the flip side, there’s nothing stopping other with less controversial opinions to post there as well. Nobody is going to be told their channel about supercars isnt racist enough, or their politics channel is too-left communist.

      • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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        Strongly disagree with you. If you have a bar that tolerates Nazis, you’ll find that bar becomes a Nazi bar over time. To commingle with Nazis is to accept them and their ideology.

        I’d have a very hard time sending people to my videos if they sit next to a white replacement theory video.

        • wewbull@feddit.uk
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          1 month ago

          I think Odysee has created far fewer Nazis than sites with addiction exploiting algorithms that say they remove such topics.

    • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Well I never happened to see anything related to these topics on Odysee. I mostly used to follow tech stuff as my other hobbies like cars and basketball aren’t really present on the platform.

      • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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        1 month ago

        If you have some favourite YouTube channels from the cars and basketball world, you should try contacting them personally and asking them to sync their channel with Odysee. Even if they choose not to; at least they’ve heard of it now, know at least some of their audience may want them to, and may consider it in the future 🙂.

        It might not work asking in YouTube comments though, but it’s worth a try. The reason I say this is I’ve personally tried it multiple times over the past year, and strangely I’ve been noticing that YouTube appear to be switching between banning the word “Odysee” spelled specifically that way, and not banning it. I would comment something with the word Odysee, and no matter what happens, it would immediately disappear the moment I refresh the page – commenting anything else would work fine. A few months later, I tried it again and it worked. Some time after that, it stopped working again, and it was like that for quite a while. Fast forward a month or two, and I again checked it a few days ago, and it seems to be currently working again; and all my previous comments from the past about Odysee have reappeared in my comment history, when they previously would not appear in my comment history. So now could be a good time to comment. It wasn’t a glitch with my account, because I tried it with two separate ones.

        • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          I can see my favorite channel now “I have zero interest in learning a new platform to have to figure out, I have a hard enough time with the mainstream sources” lmao

          we went over this with Twitter, “I am not learning another social platform, when Twitter dies I will just not have any SM Presense except discord”

            • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              I’m quoting what the last streamer who I followed stated when asked whether they would jump off Twitter when Twitter went to shit and everyone jumped ship.

        • Jordan117@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          “Associate your personal brand with the fringe-right/antivax/Nazi YouTube! What could possibly go wrong?”

    • RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      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)

      • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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        1 month ago

        I’ve noticed that the Linux and open-source community is pretty big there, too; with a lot of them being part of the privacy community. I’m a part of this community on Odysee.

        • RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          In my experience the Linux people are considerably more on peertube compared to its site, but this may just specific to the channels I watch

          • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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            1 month ago

            I don’t use PeerTube much, but I plan to. This is probably why I didn’t know it was bigger with Linux users. Though it makes sense since I tend to see PeerTube mentioned and linked to far more often on the internet than Odysee.

          • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            Its a mix of both in my exp. A deciding factor I think is money source for the creator. If it subscription (librepay, opencollective, patreon, etc) peertube is fine for them. If the primarily get paid more directly odessy is more enticing (because of its built in payment system).

    • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • snooggums@midwest.social
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        1 month 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.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

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

      • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        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

        • DreitonLullaby@lemmy.mlOP
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          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.

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            1 month 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…