UPDATE: And it’s not a good initial experience/1st impression. I’m getting this error trying to play my first upload (the upload system currently has no built-in transcoding so this is something you need to take care of yourself; the video needs to be no more than 1080p with max bitrate of 8000kbits/sec (to prevent buffering), video encoded in H.264 and audio in AAC).
I met all of those requirements; the 720p video plays for the first few seconds before erroring out requiring a retry to play a few more seconds (and repeating this error). I understand that part of the scale comes from the video blob being further distributed to these “user nodes” (peer-to-peer) as it gets more views but this doesn’t look good for low view channels where resources are going to be more constrained without that broader distribution. Thus this system is already telegraphing that it is likely not viable for my very modest needs as an uploader. I will test this out for a week to see if this remains a persistent issue.
UPDATE #2: I’m done.
Original posting below:
That is in trying out an alternative peer-to-peer video platform known as Odysee. The platform has been owned since June 2024 by Forward Research; an R&D incubator for the Arweave ecosystem. Much of their recent venture capital funding is with regards to AO and Arweave protocols. Myself, I’ve always been skeptical about Web3 (no different with this platform).
I am also fully aware that this platform hasn’t been without past controversy (some of that coming with the territory of being a de-centralized platform) along with the previous owner running afoul of U.S. securities rules/regulations. That SPL report was from 2023 (during a time when many with extremist views were pushed off of the other mainstream sites and ended up utilizing sites like Bitchute, Odysee and Rumble as alternatives). This de-centralization and far more laxed moderation, makes it an attractive site for extremist groups to proliferate on. However, even YouTube has extremists on both ends of the spectrum; there’s just a lot more “in-between” along with an algorithm that will tune itself accordingly to your Google and YouTube activities (along with whatever else cross tracking they are able to do without adequate tracker blocking).
The argument of these large tech companies being able to strike a balance with content moderation and allowing reasonable amounts of freedom of expression, has also exposed the facade of many of these companies in recent years. Most all of the major platforms have been a source of disinformation and propaganda with their algorithms being weaponized in that process. The reality is that power and wealth is rarely used for doing way more positives once a corporation reaches that level of influence (amplified when that wasn’t the core objective while the company was smaller; a perfect example of this is Marck Zuckerberg with META’s properties).
The Odysee platform is also based on blockchain technology along with crytocurrency that is the basis for the sites monetization. Blockchain has its uses but like most technologies, the scam artists end up becoming prolific at utilizing these technologies early on (like the whole NFT thing that was being hyped a few years ago). Crypto itself has its own issues (but has had enough propaganda and influential people who have been able to push it into the mainstream). I normally steer clear from apps, sites, and platforms that push crypto but with this test of Odysee, have left the monetization turned off (and disabled donation/tipping), nor have I created a wallet for the new AR crypto that will be replacing the current LBC. My objective is to host some content on it to see for myself the pros/cons of the platform.
With that said, YouTube’s recent AI age determination system plus parent Google’s own efforts (in the U.S. to start) and the rising movement of censorship on the Internet by governments around the world, has managed to push some large YouTube creators (many who have not been on this political content creation circuit) to begin setting up a presence on Odysee (mainly with the assistance of the platforms YouTube syncing; this system is reserved for those with 50K views per month and the content has to meet the platform guidelines).
I mean I get it. Attract some of the larger channels first and give them a tool that makes it an easier sell. If that can generate more viewer traffic (lead to a more virtuous cycle of growth with both content creators and viewers), then maybe this content syncing can be opened up to smaller channels (leading to a cycle that feeds upon itself). I personally am skeptical of something like this happening unless YouTube really screws up (like too high false positives with the age estimation).
Nonetheless, having a migration/syncing tool like that is a useful draw for larger creators when it comes to their reach versus having to start over from scratch (re-uploading content manually). It’s why I am just testing out the platform (none of this deters my ongoing efforts to de-platform as much as possible). If I can utilize the site to host (unlisted) content and frontend it on my own setup (like what I am doing on my “media hub”), then that might be a great use case in the future.
The main point is there being some level of a concerted movement away from platforms operated by these large major corporations (aka big tech). Do I see an alternative platform like this being able to supplant YouTube? Not really. Video platforms are notoriously difficult (bandwidth and storage intensive) even in a peer-to-peer setting. Scale normally becomes an issue for centralized systems (data storage and increased network bandwidth provisioning); it remains to be seen how this Arweave ecosystem actually scales under real world use as the site tries to entice larger YouTube channels to establish a synced presence. But until there is a larger catalyst of users (one that also causes a large number of content consumers to shift their preference elsewhere), it won’t be clear how well that scalability works.
One Comment
Comments are closed.