YouTube, like other big technology companies, has been taking several decisions over the last few days aimed, first, at reducing the visibility and blocking the monetization of Russian public media channels. But, subsequently, it has chosen to block access to them from Europe.
Motivated by this sudden loss of access to their audience, the RT television channel and the digital newspaper Sputnik have decided to ‘move over’ from YouTube and ‘move over’ to Odysee, a video platform that defines itself as “pro-free speech”. But where does this platform come from and what does it offer its users?
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Where does Odyssey come from?
Its CEO, Jeremy Kauffman, is an American who had already launched the LBRY decentralized protocol in 2015, which applies blockchain technology to file sharing and publishingallowing with the same as anyone to create applications through which content creators can:
Upload your content to the LBRY network of hosts, in the image and likeness of BitTorrent.
Determine, if you wish, a price for streaming or downloading.
Allow free viewing.
In the following years, Kauffman launched up to three web portals designed to apply this protocol to the dissemination of videos: Spee.ch, LBRY.tv and —finally— Odysee, in December 2020:
“Odysee.com is the successor to YouTube. It is built on the LBRY protocol, which does to publishing what Bitcoin does to money. It puts control back in the hands of end users, rather than a small set of elites.” .
Millions of users attracted by consistency self-censorship
Starting from this position (the website promises censor only pornography, incitement to violence and extreme violence), no one will be surprised that when Kauffman and the rest of the platform’s staff were asked to join, they too, in the censorship of Russian public media, they will reply on twitter stating that
“We don’t care about politics, and being a platform means we have to be a platform: whether it’s CNN, Fox, RT, etc… they all have a place in Odysee.”
Being consistent with what they promise, Odysee has already managed to accumulate more than 8 million users worldwide. Few, of course, if we compare them with the figures for YouTube, but many if we take into account precisely that YouTube’s quasi-monopoly is the platform with which Odysee must compete for these users.
Although certain profiles could be considered ‘overrepresented’ on this portal (‘geeks’ of decentralized tools and cryptocurrencies, former anti-vaccine youtubers censored on their platform of origin, etc.), the truth is that at this point it is about a network full of tutorials on all kinds of everyday topics, gameplays, video clips… come on, of the typical things that we would find browsing YouTube.
Charge for uploading content… and for viewing it?
The aesthetic similarities with the Google-owned video portal are clear, but Odysee offers much more than just an ‘alternative clone’ of YouTube. There is one factor in particular that sets Odysee apart from its big commercial rivals: not only allows content creators to monetize their activity, but also their consumers. Come on, it pays you to watch videos (and to invite other users, and to follow creators, and to create a channel, etc.).
Once a certain amount of LBRY tokens (also called LBC) have been accumulated, users can choose to withdraw them from their Odysee account to a crypto walletand thus exchange them for fiat money or other cryptocurrencies.
doYou already have a channel on YouTube and you want to replicate it on Odysee Why are you afraid that Google will close your channel? Well, if your original channel has a minimum of 1000 followers, there is the option to link it to the new one in Odysee and keep it automatically synchronized (and, in addition, collect tokens for it).