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 feel the need to point out that most of the “problems” you stated about YouTube are due to scale. If any YouTube competitor had to deal with the sheer amount of content YouTube does they would have the exact same problems.
Exactly.
Reddit enshittified because their management is incompetent. They couldn’t turn a profit running ads on a site that mostly serves text, and they couldn’t build a mobile app anyone actually wants to use. They wasted millions of dollars of development on nonsensical bullshit that never panned out instead of improving their core platform.
YouTube enshittified because hosting this much video is insanely complex and expensive, and people demand it for free. The idea that PeerTube or Odysee could replace it is farcical.
YouTubers themselves will not leave for anything that doesn’t pay them as much or more than YouTube itself. This is why most of them putting content on additional platforms are doing so on Nebula, Floatplane, or Patreon. Not PeerTube.
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.
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.
YouTube is much harder to replace because the hosting costs of videos are so much higher than something like reddit.
I was looking for this take. It seems like there’s huge amounts of data to constantly be serving up for video compared to more transactions but of smaller chunks of info for majority of threadiverse stuff
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I know Reddit itself overtook Digg, but that was before our current unprecedented levels of internet corporatism and monopolies.
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What’s so sad and ironic is that actual shopping malls had charm and character before the internet accelerated their decline and caused many to close.
What’s even more sad and ironic is that shopping malls themselves caused the same thing with small businesses.
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.
I really liked Odysee until I start to really see it for what it was. A place where right-wing extremists can peddle their bullshit without the threat of being shut down for their vile rhetoric.
What ultimately clued me into this was when I decided to see how Odysee was doing and I noticed on the front page was a featured creator, the one and only Lauren Southern. If you don’t know who she is, I don’t really know how to describe other than right wing grifter.
I then started to see some other creators and what they were doing. Conspiracy theorists and bigots, lots and lots of bigots.
I didn’t like how it was setup either because Odysee rewards groupthink and echo chambers. You have to have credits to post videos and there are some free ways to get these credits but like everything with crypto, you can buy the credits and these credits allow you to post videos.
If people like your videos, they might throw some credits your way but watching the video itself is helpful. So your own videos end up being a financial investment that you need a return on. Time and effort might not see a return so you’re encouraged to put together low-effort drivel that you know will make a return. The best way is to make videos that cater to your audience. If your audience is right-wingers, guess what your videos will be about. If you diversify or change your views, your audience won’t like that and they won’t watch it so you don’t get paid.
The problem with YouTube is that free alternatives don’t pay content creators. In Twitch’s case for example, they are seeing a real threat because Kick is offering tons of money to popular streamers to bring them to their platform.
Reddit doesn’t pay to content creators and mods, this makes it easier for competition to take some of their audience compared to YouTube, which to some, is their only source of income.
Decentralized places like this only need to worry about making the joining process much more simplified, there is no need to overthrow Reddit, just make it a viable alternative when users get fed up with their shitty practices down the line.
Very well put. In case of Reddit there certainly is an angle to make money by creating community, providing support, some light self-post advertising etc. you get the gist but it’s all indirect compared to YouTube’s revenue model.
I’d prefer peertube, since Odyssey has the weird crypto factors and is full of right-wing extremism. LBRY weirded me out at some point, too, for some other reasons. But yeah, Peertube never took off, largely because most popular youtubers don’t want an alternative, so the only things you can watch there are low-production-value tech videos and random vlogs. I’d love a high-quality cooking channel or something on there… but. I’d need more than one to keep bringing me back.
… Also peertube has a bad UI. But… does it embed well here?
I still prefer PeerTube.
(it’s part of the Fediverse. We’re also part of the Fediverse here on Kbin and Lemmy.)
I’ve only heard of Odysee when consipracy theorists and white supremacists get banned on YT and migrate there… I’m not saying that’s all there is there because I have no idea. But because of this negative biais, if I was looking for an alternative to YT, my first instinct wouldn’t be to head over to Odysee.
On the other hand, I think the Reddit migration has a lot better chance of succeeding than any attempts at Twitter or YouTube or Twitch migration.
On the three other sites I mentioned, you’re following specific people. If those people don’t make the jump to a new platform, there’s little reason for you to make the jump either - you’re not going to see the content you want on the new site. Reddit and kbin and lemmy, on the other hand, are community based. I can talk about movies and woodworking and programming memes here just as well as I can on Reddit. The content is the discussion, and anywhere you can find groups of like-minded people, you’ll get that content.
Other people have mentioned the monetization angle for content creators, which is another factor that doesn’t apply to community-based sites. Hell, a large part of the complaints against Reddit is that they are relying on free content and free moderation. So that barrier isn’t holding people back here.
Last point, at least for YouTube and Twitch, is that video hosting and streaming is expensive - any competitor, if they want to gain serious traction, is going to need a lot of money behind it.
I just learned about Odysee from this post. Making an account now
Lol went and checked it out and after about three minutes found out that it’s a block chain crypto bullshit website. No thanks.
Thanks for checking it out and warning us, my dude.
Also, your comment combined with the fact OP only listed some random YT alternative instead of also looking at stuff like Nebula or Feedtube (I think that’s what it’s called?) that actually has content, it makes me wonder if this was supposed to be a lowkey crypto shill.
a lot of people are probably turned off by odysee because it’s based around a crypto ponzi scam and most of the content creators there are hardcore conservatives. No thank you lol
Took waaaay too long to scroll down to this comment but bingo. It got over ran by qanon, alt right & extreme conservatives - many of whom got banned from YouTube or yea want fame & money.
