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"

  • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    36
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    TIL Odysee had ads. UBO FTW

    Edit; tbf, I haven’t been on it in a long long while. Generally too extremist for me.

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        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.

        • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          13
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          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

          • sandbox@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            edit-2
            4 months ago

            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.

          • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            4 months ago

            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.

                  • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    4 months ago

                    Recently? Because that would make sense. That’s basically who’s left on the platform.

                • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  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.

                  • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    ·
                    4 months ago

                    Let’s see…I’ve been banned from subs I’ve never viewed so much as a single post from for having commented on other, entirely unrelated subs.

                    I’ve been banned from r/atheism for “egregious immorality” which ironically sounds like the sort of thing you’d be banned from a religious sub for.

                  • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    4 months ago

                    How long ago was this? This sounds like actions that the past couple years worth of mods would take, but maybe I’m wrong.

        • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          4 months ago

          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.