Before we get into LBRY and their new Odysee platform, it’s important to talk about censorship, as this is a critical part of what makes LBRY so important.
Censorship has become one of the ‘new normals’ in society. Over the past two years, big-tech has made it their business to determine what information is safe for human consumption.
The minds of the global population is a very powerful tool, and there is a mad rush to harness this powerful tool by various entities. From what you buy to who you vote for, nothing you do is off limits and all can be easily influenced in the age of Internet.
Over the past couple years we have seen a massive increase in censorship on the Internet. Unwanted voices, voices that contradict the views and narratives of the major platforms and their state masters are being shut down at an exponential rate.
In recent years the internet has been monopolised by just a handful of companies. Censorship has become a very effective way of controlling the narrative of World events and public opinion.
Shutting down the flow of information, opinion and discussion regardless of whether it’s right or wrong is a very dangerous path to go down, it can only ever be at a detrimental effect to society.
In the UK, some suggest that sharing some types of content online should be made illegal:
Spreading anti-vaccine conspiracy theories online should be a crime, according to some of Britain’s top scientists. – Daily Mail[1]
But who decides what a conspiracy theory is, and even outright ridiculous nonsense has a place in the flow of information. Bad information needs to be quashed by good information, not censorship.
Facebook have just announced they will ban all Anti-vaccine content and conspiracy theories:
False claims that the vaccine contains microchips or is being tested on people without their consent will be removed. – The Independent[2]
This is a perfect example of why censorship is so dangerous, because the latter part of this statement is absolutely true. From the same publication almost a decade before:
The recruitment of hundreds of tribal girls without parental consent for an immunisation study sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on the nod of the warden of their government hostel. Several girls subsequently died. The study was halted by the federal authorities. – The Independent[3]
I covered the topic of censorship in depth in a previous article HERE[4], it’s well worth a read if you’re interested in the topic.
So how is the best way to circumvent this rampant rise in censorship?
We build censorship resistant platforms. Enter LBRY the protocol behind the new Odysee platform.
What is LBRY?
On the surface LBRY is a platform for sharing content in all forms across the internet, content creators can earn revenue using the platform’s own native cryptocurrency, LBRY Credits – LBC.
However, what separates LBRY from a traditional content sharing platform is what’s going on under the hood.
Content is not held in any one specific place, similar to BitTorrent when a content creator shares their media the content remains on their system, the LBRY blockchain makes a reference of the location of this file on the network and when another user watches the content they too hold a copy of the file.
This allows all media to become decentralised as a single media clip spreads out across the World over the LBRY network.
All other data is held on the LBRY blockchain, which is also fully decentralised using a distributed ledger-based on the Bitcoin blockchain. This ensures there is no single point of failure, and upholds the promise of censorship resistance.
Using the power of blockchain and LBRY’s unique LBRY:// protocol content creators now have a safe haven to upload content and share and protect from the ever-increasing internet censorship we are facing.
Content does not rely on your third-party servers, if platforms distributing LBRY content, such as Odysee go down or get taken offline you can use the LBRY Application which can be downloaded HERE.
Using the LBRY:// protocol, speech is forever embedded into history.
What is Odysee?
Odysee is the new front end platform utilizing the LBRY protocol, it is a revamp of the LBRY.TV frontend offering a superior user experience.
So, let’s take a look at who there is to watch over on Odysee
More and more content creators are turning to Odysee every day in an effort to protect their speech.
I urge you all to support both the platform and the content creators. Censorship is not going away, and it’s only going to get worse without the support of you, the viewer.
Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, YouTube’s founders developed YouTube for reasons which we still are unclear of today, the story of its founding according to Chen and Hurley is simply based around a personal need which they couldn’t fulfil online, sharing videos.
What they created in those early days was a place where anyone could post anything they wanted. It was interesting; it was strange; at times, it was outright bizarre. For the first time, the human imagination was unleashed for anyone to watch and share.
But as the platform became more popular, it became more restricted, more censored, until it became what it is now, which is nothing more than corporate and state media.
Founder of LBRY inc. Jeremy Kauffman said in his latest interview with the popular technology journal, Techcrunch[5]:
“If you want to go watch ‘The Daily Show’ or Gordon Ramsay clips, go to YouTube, if you want to watch this crazy, trippy video that a 19-year-old made in their house but it’s super interesting, that’s the kind of stuff that you can find on Odysee.” – Techcrunch[5]
LBRYnomics
If you are interested to see who uses LBRY and what the top ranking channels are, along with many fascinating statistics, check out LBRYnomics[6].
You can also join the LBRYnomics community where you can get involved with the LBRY community, speak to the team and get involved with LBRY directly.
Support Free Speech
It is so very important right now that we support the right to our free speech. Governments and big tech are systematically destroying it as I write this with far more censorship in the pipeline.
This will not go away, YouTube isn’t going to backtrack and decide they made some poor decisions. YouTube is nothing more than another arm of the state and corporate technocrats.
One of the best ways you can support free speech is by supporting the new platforms that promote it. Currently LBRY via their Odysee platform is the best offering out there to do this.
Give it go, let us know what you think and don’t forget to Subscribe to our Channel
I’m from the UK and when it asks for me to verify my number I get a list of countries with two letters … I’m not sure as to what two letters the UK is listed under ?
Could you please help ? Thankyou : )
The UK area code is +44, you can find this in the drop down box with the letters GB (Great Britain). I hope this helps. James
Hi im finding great difficulty in connecting to odysee mike moore
Hi Michael, In what way are you struggling to connect to odysee? Their website, or specific videos?
Let me know.
James