So YouTube has a lot of problems, there’s no denying that. Frivolous and selective (not to mention automated) copyright enforcement, bureaucratic termination appeal system, COPPA idiocy, the whole clusterfuck that is monetization, etc?
In contrast, Odysee is this open-source video platform that fixes many of these problems. It took of, like, I dunno, a year ago? Thing is, it’s still very inactive and dead. A lot of YouTubers have pined for a massive exodus from YouTube, which might sound familiar for many of us Lemmings here. Yet, the majority of them can’t seem to let it go, since YouTube/Google pretty much exercises a monopoly on the online video sharing industry.
What worries me is that Reddit alternatives, such as Lemmy, Mastodon, or kbin, could see a similar fate to YouTube alternatives like Odysee or BitChute. I’d love to see people quit Reddit en masse and hopefully find a “safe harbor” some place like here, but I’m hearing about realistic concerns regarding even the viability of this site’s databases, so I feel like the actual outcome will be more of a small dent than a massive crater.
Which is exactly what Huffman wants and he knows it.
Ugh, I hate this awful corporate creativity-stifling timeline.
I know Reddit itself overtook Digg, but that was before our current unprecedented levels of internet corporatism and monopolies.
Difference between YouTube and Reddit is that YouTube is a content based platform, where as Reddit is a community based platform. In YouTube, people who post videos literally get paid based on their views, so it’s extremely hard for them to move to a different platform where they would not get paid as much. You don’t have that aspect in Reddit. There is no incentive to stay on Reddit if you could do the same thing elsewhere.
That’s one significant impasse: YouTube has become a place for content generated with the goal of being paid. It initially wasn’t, and need not be. The “in” for an alternative could be simply in catering to those who motivation isn’t primarily financial. Along with an audience who a different motivation and expectation around content consumption. Just as with the fediverse.
And, we would be better served doing away with the idea of replacing platforms like YouTube and rather providing bespoke alternatives. We’ll succeed when we stop trying to replace Tesco with Walmart. Which can be difficult, currently, when many users have probably only experienced living in a town where all your shopping is done there and never known a thriving downtown of small businesses.
I also don’t think we should ‘replace’ anything. We can be an alternative, but not a replacement. For a community to be tight knit, it should be smaller. The larger a community gets, the more the users become strangers and apathetic. That’s when all the trolling and bad comments start. I think Lemmy’s focus should be on being a sustainable community, not to replace a platform of millions and millions of users.
YouTube is much harder to replace because the hosting costs of videos are so much higher than something like reddit.
I honestly had never heard of it. They could probably stand to do a little marketing.
My biggest worry about alternate video providers is their longevity at scale.
Since you’re here to talk about them why don’t you tell us a little about them? Are they free do they have pay options how are the ads? Do they have limits on length and quality? I actually wouldn’t mind having an alternative to YouTube while I’m pulling stuff out of Reddit video to post here.
OK, I did some research, but not the kind where you die in a submarine next to the titanic.
Odysee is running in the LBRY blockchain.
You can’t realistically remove things from the blockchain, but they have made the site and the accounting filterable so they can effectively remove things from the public eye.
There’s a lot of conspiracy theory on there, like a lot - a lot. There seems to be some marginally decent content in fits and starts. You earn crypto for watching and crypto for uploading, but the amounts look truly trivial.
Due to them effectively banning accounts and removing content when necessary, the people who came there to have a ‘safe space’ from regulation are mad.
The content that’s on there that’s not ‘aliens’ is mostly B-roll, but not without a few decent content creators.
The video lnks are on the chain, is stored in a torrent system. I suspect LBRY project is fronting a lot of money to run torrent boxes to distribute the data. They’re funding the servers by selling crypto coins which pissed off the SEC.
They claim the servers are there to make things better but are not necessary. I suspect without the company support, you’re watching bob’s video from bob’s hard drive then becoming a replica that others can watch. The coins here are kind of a pyramid scheme. At some point their economy will become (more) stale and the company will probably move on.
A video host with no restrictions will immediately just become a pool of all the people who are running from restrictions. It’s possible it could grow better with time, it’s also possible that once the watchers pull out the domain will get iced for illegal content and they’ll start going all how to catch a predator on the the ip’s sharing bad things.
Searching around, it doesn’t feel like my crowd.
I think it is going to take a while and be a slow process for these alternatives to take over. As more people join there will be more people to help with the codebase to make it better which will make it easier for other people to join. One way to help both Odysee and Lemmy would be to start uploading videos to Odysee and using it to share videos on Lemmy. Maybe eventually there could be some integration between the two.
