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"
As a youtube premium member i wish youtube could cut out all ads for everyone and just keep the premium advantages for members. But i’m sure it’s not that easy to keep the boat afloat. Hopefully they can get to a healthy balance of income for watch time and reduce ads for free viewers. But we all know they just want to see the line go up for the greed and would never reduce ads if people still watch with as many ads as possible.
Exactly - there’s no such thing as “we got enough income, so maybe we should be kinder to our users”, when it comes to Alphabet/Google/YouTube.
I’ve had a YouTube premium subscription for a long time as well, what advantages are there besides no ads that are actually worth having?
Youtube music comes with youtube premium wich i use a lot, listening with the screen turned off wich i use a lot for music and asmr, i saw that they added some kind of upscaling on some videos that i think are under 1080p to 1080p with increased bitrate or something like that, they added games recently wich i could not care less about. There might be other stuff but i’m not sure what else could be premium.
Yeah, I use YouTube music a lot. In terms of YouTube itself though, it’s basically no ads, and the creators you do watch get a bit more coin than thru otherwise would.
I just noticed a new premium feature. I had a button pop up on screen to skip a sponsored segment in a video XD
Ooh, neato.
Adding to what has already been said, offline viewing in the mobile app, while still synchronizing the status of watched videos when you go back online. Already existed with new pipe, but now the creators get rewarded.