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"
Focused on “free speech”?
When I see that used multiple times by a platform operator it invariably means they’re right-wing wingnuts and/or the platform will devolve into right wing drivel while silencing dissent.
Yup. And on descriptive grounds, the whole thing falls into a false dichotomy: treating free speech as an all-or-nothing matter, instead treating freedom of speech as a scale. And that giving someone complete freedom of speech always means restricting the freedom of speech of someone else.
(I typically exemplify this through a guy with a megaphone in an offline plaza. Telling him to drop off the megaphone reduces his ability to reach willing listeners, thus his freedom of speech; but if you leave him alone nobody else can be heard, so their freedom of speech is lowered.)
Thank you, you put it better than I could. It’s not binary, it’s not all or nothing. You can have some freedom of speech and yet still not really have freedom of speech if you’re silenced by those who disagree.
Yes, your megaphone example is a special case of the paradox of tolerance. In this instance, tolerance of loud voices means quiet voices are drowned out.
It’s related - Popper’s paradox highlights that you can’t compromise with some people, while my focus is that you need to impose some limits.
It’s easy to tweak the example though, to be more like the paradox - if the megaphone guy is telling people to kick off the plaza some people, or saying stuff to make them leave.
Yes, or if multiple people get into a megaphone arms race and are all noise blasting each other so hard that no one can hear anything anymore.
The only way free speech can survive is with decentralized platforms like email and lemmy. Any time there is central control free speech isn’t.
This isn’t even a true statement. Mods are human and can silence views they don’t like.
Go post some progressive and democratic views or criticize authoritarian support over on the grad.ml side. See how long it is before you’re shut down, blocked or even banned. There’s no free speech rule just because the platform is decentralized.
The only mitigating factors are that you can have a platform for opposing views, but even that isn’t a guarantee here because the instance can be defederated and effectively silenced.
It’s free speech in a federated environment because someone can’t remove your voice.
It doesn’t obligate anyone to listen to you. So federated instances having opinions about who they talk to doesn’t contradict free speech.
People who want to talk about The Second Coming of the Space Pope are free to do so and don’t require any third party to let them do so.
Couldn’t that argument of different instances and their opinions be said about different centralised companies as well?
And that’s more-or-less what Odysee is working toward.
You think Lemmy has free speech? Some major mods here are quite liberal in controlling exactly what speech and ideas they allow their uses to be exposed to, and that is how it will always be by those desiring power over others.
Yes, Lemmy is 100% free speech.
We can make lemmy.spacepope.org and nobody can silence us. It doesn’t prevent other instances from refusing to listen to the truth of space, but those who want to participate can.
eyeroll
Link to an example where the platform in question has silenced dissent?
Looks like you care zilch for free speech. If you and others with this opinion cared for free speech, you would promote your own alternative ideas on those platforms to even things out, instead of whining that there’s more opposing views to yours on the platform than not.
“If you really cared about free speech you wouldn’t be using your free speech to call out Nazis”
Did you specifically skip past the past where I said they silence dissent?
But thanks for telling me what I believe.
Do they? Do you have evidence?
Because I’m interested in YT alternatives. I pay for Nebula, and I’m interested in other platforms as well, especially if they champion free speech (like, actual free speech, not whatever Musk means by “free speech”).
Sure. Me. I’ve had comments deleted by admins when I criticized things like Russia feeding arms to Iran, operating misinformation campaigns, and generally trying to destabilize democracies.
That’s lame. Was that before or after LBRY’s bankruptcy? I’m wondering if they’ve changed their admins.