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"
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.