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"
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
Finally: ad-free Nazi Propaganda.
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.
There is moderation, the ability to report content and comments, and community guidelines. Odysee having a complete lack of moderation is a myth, and I have personally had content removed by moderators before by reporting it.
“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 incentivizing people to purchase memberships do the video creators can make money
Yeah, it’s referring to the memberships you can begin as a monthly donation to specific creators, not the Premium subscription that directly supports Odysee.
Edit: I now know that this banner is not an ad for Odysee’s premium subscriptions as it may seem to be. Memberships are separate to Premium entirely. Memberships are like the “Join” button you find on YouTube, where you pay a donation to that specific content creator and may get bonuses such as a badge next to your name in the comments, early access to videos, etc. depending on what benefits the creator chose themselves. Odysee only gets a 5% cut from this. This is completely justified as being the only thing that is arguably an ad on the site, as it is purely there to help creators thrive on the platform, and it can also be hidden permanently by clicking the X at the top-right of the banner; so they aren’t even being forceful about it either. The ads being removed were mainly referring to the pop-up ads that third-parties could place on the website.
Good luck to them
Isn’t this the crypto bro, far right haven site? No thanks.
Why not do proper research about the platform before attacking one of the only platforms trying to create the change they want to see in the world?
Please be aware, Odysee was recently purchased by a Crypto company that also acquired an NFT company.
For more info, see my comment here: https://slrpnk.net/comment/9749921
I would not recommend investing any time or money into the platform, as it will inevitably crash and burn as the owners walk away flush with cash while everyone else is left holding the bag.
Peertube is not ideal, but it is currently the only alternative that isn’t tied to a shady crypto scheme.
Nazi NFTs you say?
Not interested.
I attack them because the change they want to create is not one I want. You can keep your Nazi and crypto trash to yourself.
deleted by creator
You know what’s interesting to me? People only screech “free speech!” when they are trying to say something shitty.
Freedom of persecution from the government for speech criticizing that government is a good thing.
But “freedom of speech absolutism” is only ever used as an argument by shitty people trying to say shitty things. Free speech doesn’t mean you should be free from repercussions from your peers.
Nazis don’t need a platform, and they don’t need Devil’s advocates like you.
But “freedom of speech absolutism” is only ever used as an argument by shitty people trying to say shitty things. Free speech doesn’t mean you should be free from repercussions from your peers.
Me commenting on Odysee that LibreWolf is a great browser for privacy, or that SuperTuxKart and Veloren are good open source games is me saying shitty things, is it? You don’t even know the things that are said by the people you are talking about who advocate free speech absolutism. Further, Odysee inherently does not allow an absolutist level of free speech (it legally can’t), which is the whole reason they have community guidelines that must be followed.
Edit: I accidentally seemed to be implying that I was a free speech absolutist when I am not. I do not believe that people should be allowed to promote violence or hatred of any kind; Odysee doesn’t allow this either. What I DO believe, is that those people should be allowed to express through speech what their own views are; even Nazi’s; as long as they aren’t promoting Nazism, violence, hatred or similar. So no, I am not being a devils advocate, because if the platform was completely 100% free speech to the point where it actually allows true hate speech, promotion or encouragement of violence and hatred etc., I wouldn’t be supporting the platform and defending it at all. If it were like that and I was still promoting it, than fair… calling me a devil’s advocate would make sense.
It split from LBRY, which originally pushed a cryptocurrency system kind of like Brave’s BAT. They’re now trying to go decentralized, but it’s with a blockchain system, so I guess we’ll see where that goes (blockchain isn’t a problem, provided they’re not pushing a currency).
I’m interested to see where it goes, so I sub to a few channels I’d otherwise watch on YouTube. But I’m not giving them any of my money until they earn it. I’m currently paying for Nebula because a few of my favorite channels are there, and I’d be willing to pay for Odysee if there was a decent value proposition.
Blockchain is innately stupid. There is no scenario where it would make sense to use blockchain over another technology.
I disagree. I think it makes a lot of sense for something like a distributed authentication system. Or perhaps a distributed voting system. Basically, if you want a distributed system with some sort of consensus, blockchain is your best bet.
Are they still using LBRY? Or did they switch to a different protocol?
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.
I was curious what Arweave was, so I went to their site.
Turns out it’s yet another crypto scheme.
I thought this statement on their landing page was particularly funny:
The Arweave protocol is stable, mature and widely adopted.
It’s a blockchain system, but that doesn’t mean it’s related to cryptocurrencies in any way. Maybe it is, idk, but blockchain != cryptocurrencies, many cryptocurrencies use blockchains though because it’s useful for what they’re trying to do.
I am aware that blockchain is not the same thing as cryptocurrency.
And they do have a coin:
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.
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)
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
I think Odysee has created far fewer Nazis than sites with addiction exploiting algorithms that say they remove such topics.
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.
If one Nazi is allowed into a bar, it’s a Nazi bar. I’ll continue to steer clear.
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.
please. If you’re going to spew this droll bullshit at least be aware that receipts exist.
so lets dive in shall we?
Odysee was built on the back of LBRY another typical crypto scam bullshit that was broke. couldn’t even pay a 100k lawsuit against them when the SEC took them to court and they went bust. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/16/lbry-closes-odysee-cryptocurrency-tech-sec-fraud-extremist
Also you say you’re not a nazi but hey your platform of choice sure does love em! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/14/odysee-video-platform-nazi-content-not-grounds-for-removal
They’re also anti physically and mentally disabled: https://www.dailycal.org/archives/lbry-public-sharing-platform-uploads-20-000-deleted-uc-berkeley-lectures/article_14cffebb-7495-5bea-93f9-ae49d03fcf7a.html thy reuploaded 20,000 lecture videos that were deemed illegal by the US Department of Justice for violating the American Disabilities Act. So they don’t care about deaf people. cool.
They also don’t moderate shit: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/technology/big-tech-power-bitcoin.html They say they’ll allow anything other then porn and calls to violence and terrorism buuuuuut they allow porn, calls to violence, and terrorism. Hell just checking out the “lifestyle” section you’ll see that what they state they’ll moderate just isn’t true.
Banned users from other platforms are welcome with open arms on Odysee: https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2021-04-19/from-cooking-videos-to-qanon-n-h-based-video-platform-attracts-users-banned-elsewhere you know, People banned for good reason.
If you allow a nazi to drink in your bar, even if it’s just one, you’re a nazi bar.
cause, you know, the Global Network on Extremism and Terrorism called it “The New Youtube for the Far-Right” https://gnet-research.org/2021/02/17/odysee-the-new-youtube-for-the-far-right/
So you saying you’re not a facist, neo-nazi, or any of that is funny considering you SURE DO love hanging out with them.
“When someone tells you who they are, believe them.”
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.
“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.
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.
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.
Nothing about the LBRY token was a scam. You just hate cryptocurrency. Who needs literally the only form of decentralized online currency, right?
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
That logic would make you a communist at Lemmy.
I don’t really think that’s true, so long as you stay off the tankie instance. I have it blocked.
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.
Great description, I may have to go chock this output. Any good android app for it, or is the mobile site a PWA?
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.
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.
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.
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”
What are you quoting? I didn’t say any of that.
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.
“Associate your personal brand with the fringe-right/antivax/Nazi YouTube! What could possibly go wrong?”
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.
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!
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.
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.
I have. Literally checked out the the site for the first time today because of this post. it’s literally on their front page. I don’t have an account there, private window, all that and I still got it either far right or racist or conspiracy bullshit.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
Yikes. So if there weren’t laws, they would let worse stuff fly than endorsing genocide.
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…
Honestly, after all the shit YouTube is pulling with their ad systems, I wouldn’t mind those old tiny banner strip ads that used to occasionally pop up at the bottom of a video. Compared to the current standard of 3 minutes of unskippable ads interrupting every other video, those little banners are downright unobtrusive.
Hell, I never minded those in theory, it was only how obnoxious they were made that was the problem.
That’s the issue with online advertising in a nutshell, isn’t it.
Don’t forget that ads used to be context aware instead of user aware. Which was perfect for privacy.
Oh wow I forgot about those
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
Unfortunately, it’s probably the latter.
Executive Julian Chandra wrote to Odysee site moderators that “a Nazi that makes videos about the superiority of the white race” was not grounds for removal from Odysee.
They have actively defended far-right content, even videos that have openly called for genocide.
For balance, though, they haven’t purged left wing content like some “free speech” people do (not that there’s much of that there anyway)
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.
Yes, it goes both ways. And they aren’t using the platform to push any of their personal believes either.
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.
Why does that always end up being the case?
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.
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?
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.
Can you recommend me more than a few hardcore leftist content creators exclusively releasing content on Odyssee?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
While we are at it, lets cancel the postal service since they allow Nazi’s to send newsletters.
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.
that’s a lot of words to say “no one wants to advertise on our pro-nazi video site”
Yep. Use FastLBRY, not Odysee
Edit: huh… it might be dead now?
You just made an excellent point without realizing it. #mayflies
Thank goodness we have Lemmies ensuring no alternative tech can threaten YouTube. I was worried people might actually be against Odyssey in the comments
This Lemmy community is actually more pro-mainstream than Reddit and YouTube combined. Thank you for pointing this out. Time to go.
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.
I remember liking the idea of Odysee, but that turned rather quickly
Good, ads sucks.
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.
Legitimately first time hearing about Odysee… Impressed, this could actual be a YouTube replacement.
I’m glad my reaching out has helped find people who’ve never heard of it. It’s got quite a lot of users, but has been growing very slowly in user-base the last few years, simply due to not enough people talking about it and allowing natural growth of the platform.
