Oddbean new post about login | logout I am being shadow banned on YouTube. I still have yet to figure out the best option for censorship resistant video hosting that: -has reach (need to teach newcomers) -is resilient -can host large files (both size and length) Please let me know your thoughts and potential solutions.
Many of us are a slave to the Tube. I mean there is Rumble but that’s it. Or develop your own media outlet.
I don't think there is any yet.
Flare.pub 🤙
How does the reach compare to YouTube?
Nothing has reach compared to YouTube 🤷♂️ But as nostr’s userbase continues to grow, and as existing social/media platforms begin to adopt Nostr and convert their apps into clients (a la @fountain_app podcasts), then having a robust and well-established nostr presence can only set one up for success 🤙 I’d also offer that in Ben’s case, considering his work with HRF, many of the users who seek out his videos may specifically appreciate being able to access the content outside of the big tech silos and heavily surveilled media networks.
Yeah, sad truth it is. There are good solutions for hosting, censorship resistence where users will be willing to go but there is nothing comparable in reach to YouTube. That makes it super hard for creators who get shadow banned there who want to grow their audience more. I think limiting factor is time now, like 2-10 years until nostr picks up enough user base to make it reasonable.
🎯🎯🎯
nostr:nprofile1qqsfnz2sqsflkatdssmeztxr90s8xrd7r07xkhfwaa6eu9zkcguljpgprdmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuur0wf6x2mt0dejhymewvdhk6qgjwaehxw309ac82unsd3jhqct89ejhxqgcwaehxw309akxjemgw3hxjmn8wfjkccte9e3k7mg2kf0ae
This 👆
We’re getting ready to do some really cool things with video @The Fishcake🐶🐾
Maybe a good starting point to kickstart something on Nostr as an idea ? It was just a matter of time till this would happen. There is some firepower available within the bitcoin podcast space who most of them still using YouTube. I even reckon thats worth an episode of why we are bullish ✊
@Derek Ross @jb55 @semisol @nostr.build any ideas?
when funding?
video infrastructure is a complex topic to make it work requires no effort with an MP4 on a server to make it work WELL requires optimizations, and money for that to be usable (CDNs, servers for transcode and similar) even one second of buffering can impact viewing experience for a normie instead of funding ecash wallets maybe someone willing to work on the real problems should be funded
@utxo the webmaster 🧑💻 mentioned Blossom. I would love a good set of instructions on how to go about this. Good luck!
Self host it on nostr with blossom 🌸
Sounds good. How? Is there guidance?
First off, that sucks, sorry to hear. Now, get your content on https://flare.pub by @zach (the sharp mind also behind flockstr). The UI/UX is incredibly slick, for one thing. Resilience: your content is published to your Nostr relays, with all the implied benefits that nostr brings. Reach: I’m not sure how many users there are now, but we know that nostr is growing (or rising, as @NVK might suggest). Even if it’s not your primary platform yet, the redundancy is valuable. Large file hosting: I’ll defer to Zach for specs/limits but i know you can buy upload credits. Would love to see your content here on Nostr, brother 🤙
Continue publishing to YouTube and simultaneously upload to all other streaming sites you can such as Rumble and Odysee. Further you've got to promote your website and social media more often, down to the point of being obnoxious about it. I think there's a way to create an rss feed for a YouTube channel, but I don't know the specifics at the moment. What's needed is a podcasting app that incorporates torrents as a source for audio and video. Qbittorrent allows subscribing to an rss feed in the app, but a podcasting oriented app would be better.
You can’t have Big Tech reach and own your own content. Video podcasting has been around forever but YouTube captured that market since it’s free to use. blubrry.com offers video podcasting hosting and it would even be watchable on podcasting 2.0 apps. Here’s an example. https://podverse.fm/episode/SmqJlJjtj
That was the one I was thinking of earlier!
I want to bring back indie blurays. People who want to watch them would pay for them.
It's odd that each plan offers unlimited plays/listens but price varies based on storage needs. I would've thought bandwidth would cost a host more than storage but I guess the idea is that if a podcaster doesn't need more than 400 MB of storage, they're probably not driving enough traffic to make a difference? https://blubrry.com/services/plans-pricing/
The reach part is tricky, directing people to a cypher.space or npub.pro site, and using a mix of zpay.live blossom and nostr.build would be wild, but the normies are in digital gulags, to reach them you'll probably need to be ok living alongside the thugs in police outfits.....to a certain degree.
Rumble is the only alternative with 1/1 millionth of the views unfortunately
They still tried/are trying to kill it
how do you know you are being shadow banned. still showing up in my feed. and view count seems to float around your average.
Is https://odysee.com/ a temporary solution, until something with big and with big reach get created on Nostr?
the only thing that meets those 3 things as of right now that I know of is: https://rumble.com
good watch https://youtu.be/G1A3jq-Vrbk
The challenge is not that there are alternatives (with smaller reach) but that even the alternatives aren't indexed by the search engines with the biggest reach. We got to go old school... Like pre-google old school. You got your site. Host your vids. Post on Nostr. Post on X. But to get more reach you got to post on Reddit.
twitter is it. I wish they had a layout view so you could make playlists but they have been my backup for video reach
Rumble?
Rumble has been the only serious solution for all other Youtube-exiles. Personally I favor (& subscribe) to Rumble for everything that isn’t youtube-only. It’s a solid, growing community there…but has maybe 10% to 20% of viewers, depending on the channel.
I feel ya. I quit YouTube and deleted all videos but one so I could use it for pod 2.0 alternate enclosure. I hate that I still had to use it for that. I had yoga videos up there, but any “alternative” health / fitness / spiritually gets shadowbanned. You stop getting views despite best practices. You stop getting subs too. That’s how you know… @Jor Looking into options too, finding nothing that checks all boxes for reach, file size etc. It’s a PITA. So, for now, I’ve joined a yoga teaching platform that handles all the things (hosting, payments, etc). And it’s very new and very Fiat, so can be a total failure and it’s a huge risk. But what I get there is a chance, something different, and community. Mondays I teach yoga live on @HiveTalk and accept zaps #v4v. I figure if I don’t do something in both Fiat and BTC worlds, I won’t accurately understand the problems and help work toward a solution. So keep kicking those tires, Ben. And the rest of you, like Jor. We need more creators to work, experiment, and tell the builders what we want. 🫡 I’m limited in how much time and effort I can make. Like most, I’ve got the Fiat mines to work in. I won’t be building anything from scratch and I don’t think it’s wrong for someone like myself (a non-dev) to want a SaaS service of some kind that meets my needs and just works. 🤙
Rumble is the next best option
Rumble?
There’s also VERO
Learn RSS, embrace Podcasting 2.0.
With a reasonable following on YouTube, I feel your pain, especially as there is no alterative (Rumble sucks). I've settled on a dual system. 1. Continue to upload to YouTube. 2. Host the videos on my website by embedding them from Vimeo. It's easier to drive traffic to your own website than driving it to youtube. Plus I can use the vimeo link to also publish the videos to Flare......as per below. https://www.flare.pub/w/naddr1qqr5ykzkv4d854cppamhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5pzppcjkd57jp4rjf0kqqqvp2wp9hjncg5lddswu6rf949h8pqxykheqvzqqqy9hvx5slnr
Being shadow banned in big tech is a moral imperative.
Rumble? https://rumble.com/
Ben's recent Asgigaru tutorial is un-searchable on YouTube. Here is the link to the video someone doesn't want you to see: https://youtu.be/ULZoPMCYPfk nostr:nevent1qqsydmtx4d36uwtwleapddv7qjm0d8qhgezewdtky7q609fn2l99eucpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43z7q3qrxysxnjkhrmqd3ey73dp9n5y5yvyzcs64acc9g0k2epcpwwyya4sxpqqqqqqzuvryuz
So sorry to hear that Ben. So much hard work has gone into that. Any hope of getting it reversed? Afraid to say but with Bitcoin and content it's only a matter of time that status quo platforms do this "Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach" Very interested to see what alternative solution you come up with... Nostr is too early to give you reach, but you should find the other 2
Joinpeertube.org? Odysee.com?
We’ve been shadow banned for years as well. It shows up easily in our statistics. People often can’t find us even when they’re following us closely or even when searching by episode number. It’s so degen… Our solution for the last four years while we wait patiently for Nostr: 1. Post content to Rumble, Odysee, Brighteon, and BitChute. They can’t take everything down, and the right people find you in some “sly, roundabout way.” 2. Set up additional accounts (for controversial content only) on social media and/or YouTube. If they take that alternate account down, you still have your main account for the plebs. 3. Set up online paid membership portal or do offline training program with workbooks. It’s old school, but people dig it.
No expert but if search reach is a goal given your suspicions on YouTube then I second all the comments on having your own page, working on SEO and possibly paying for Google Ads. If the model on YouTube is similar to search then less engagement could be related to someone else paying more to rank similar searches higher. Also I was thinking about this the other day that I don’t think a good book taking someone from exchanges and buying all the way through to multisig and FOSS wallets like sparrow doesn’t really exist. Would get out of date fast but if your primary growth market is new people in the space would be interesting to see what a guide book to self custody would do on Amazon. Books are easier to go at your own pace instead of rewinding videos.
Unfortunately I have no idea, but I’d be interested in hearing what you find! Sorry to hear about your YouTube issues 😞
I'm so sorry Ben that you suffered that kind of censorship.
I'm trying to figure that out myself. Seeing someone like you who's put in so much work to provide high-quality content, build up a large following, and then at the click of a button, and because for some reason content might not be considered politically correct, you lose visibility... To me, it makes me think: Isn't it weird that most of our exchange of ideas is hosted on platforms of private companies? This isn't normal and isn't how it's supposed to be. Nostr is the future, and we should be able to build our personal algorithms where we decide what we see. There's too much room for private companies to feed us with whatever. Many people I follow/subscribe to, I don't see anymore in my feed, and I see a lot of profiles that I don't follow being fed to me. It should be entirely in our hands! At the moment, the freedom to follow/subscribe to whoever you want is similar to the freedom to vote in our fake democracies. We should have a say on very concrete questions. That being said, Nostr in 2024 is like Bitcoin in 2012. Nostr provides a basis for freedom of speech, and free exchange of ideas. Even if it's less convenient now, I'm sure it will pay out later on.
Build this & they will come... Been ideating the last couple of hours... How could you build this with Nostr-first approach now? I think the hardest part is "reach" Maybe you could do something very unscalable at the start, but simply cross-post to all legacy platforms physically But one day maybe that would become a "Buffer for Nostr" ie a scheduling tool that automatically published all across the internet nostr:note1gmkkd2mr4cukaln6z66eup9k76wpw3j9ju6hvfup572nx472tnesv3t9e8
Rumble
While not perfect, Rumble seems like the best option.
I see most posting their content both at Rumble and Patreon. I did find this article which might be useful https://www.lemonlight.com/blog/20-places-to-post-your-video-for-maximum-reach/ Begin creating an email list so you can email your content. Have a simple opt in page that offers a free gift PDF (or the like) for adding their name. No one can take away an email list of subscribers. Host the videos on your own site using your own domain as well as duplicate posting on public platforms. Send the link to self hosted/posted videos in the emails you send to subscribers that have added themselves to your email list.
I’m looking into self hosting with Peertube.
Yunohost is the easiest way I found to do this. How are you hosting it¿
Yunohost is new to me....I don't know yet.
Madness!
OEF! Once google starts to hide you its tough to make a come back, same with many blogs they've killed a lot of business models in favour of saving reddit pushing people to the site at x10 what it once was before the API deal
Did you got any feedback by YouTube yet?
#Odysee #Rumble
#Nostr #Odysee and #Rumble
Rumble has a lot of adoption, there are profiles with millions of followers, therefore, if reach is what you seek with less censorship that is the way to go, I believe the CEO was recently on the run from Europe after Pavel was arrested but... #Odysee is superior in look and feel and cneoarship resistant too, I wish you could convince #Odysee CEO to jump onboard with #Bitcoin, #Nostr and start updating their app to be android TV compatible. #Telegram is another option with millions of aubs #VK has millions of subs too, it has lots of diverse content, seems to be an alternative to censorship many are using, I find myself linked to its contain often and the experience is excellent
Publish on nostr host yourself?
Rumble seems to be biggest after YouTube. Odysee is out there too. No one has the "reach" for newcomers like YouTube currently. it is a vicious cycle. Until content creators move, the viewership won't move. Viewers aren't going to go to alternatives and watch nothing. Creators must go first.
From my years of experience with content, big tech, marketing and censorship (only in the past 4 years) - there’s no magic solution. My strategy is omni-presence - being on as many channels as possible, and being prepared with redundancies for the day they close one channel for you. Two platforms I would consider if I were you: Spotify and Substack. Both have video, both have decent discovery mechanisms for new audiences. They’re not YouTube - but they’re opening you up to more audiences. Rumble was mentioned here but I don’t think rumble or Odysee have the discovery of newcomers that YouTube has. I’m on rumble too. Happy to chat more about it (offline or online) if you wish! Good luck! 😍💜
Nostr
I interpret this to mean that YouTube will still host your content; and, anyone with the proper YouTube URLs can watch it, right? You just need an efficient way to promote the YouTube URLs (because, presumably, YouTube has ceased doing so on your behalf). I would continue to use YouTube for hosting while I still can; and, focus on trying to migrate your following to Nostr. Maybe create an nPub just for promoting videos - maybe even a whole Nostr client as a gateway to YouTube URLs could be a good project for someone (similar to what @fountain_app does for podcasts?). Either way, a potential audience could have easy access to your library without even necessarily having to set up a Nostr profile if they didn't want to (but could if they wanted to receive notifications, make comments, other engagement, etc). If you can get to the point that Nostr has sufficiently supplemented your reach, then it would be much less painful to eventually abandon YouTube as your host as well (either voluntarily or otherwise). I think I would be very hesitant to make the move to rely on another centralized alternative - just to be in the position to potentially get rugged again.
We are also shadow banned I think as we have 0 views actually. 🐰 🤣
You should sell your tutorials in packages on DVD and VHS
Don't tempt me!
Do it.
Peertube selfhosted
if you're being shadow banned then YT has the same potential for reach than Flare, ZapStream, Odysee or any other platform out there. I don't think it matters where you host your videos. What matters is how do people find them and for that you already have your nostr reach and your followers on other social media network. People interested in your content will find it through your socials and they wont care where it's being hosted.
This is a good point. I hope @BTCsessions has reached a critical mass where the word of mouth is sufficient - don't need YT algos anymore.
Once a video is finalized, you can use IPFS Desktop to hash and share the link. The reach might suffer a bit at first, but the more people who co-host the videos, the faster it will get.
Wouldn't that require others to have IPFS too?
Anyone can access IPFS content via the web. Anyone who wants to help host can download IPFS Desktop for free and copy/paste the CID's for content you want to host. And you can upload ANYTHING.
Now I'm in heck because when I looked into IPFS in the past I thought it seemed worthless and what you're describing sounds way too good to be true, so I wish I could remember what was offputting about it to me before. I might have to try offering one of my systems to the network for a little while, even though I'll probably stop after that little while and research it more
Running raw IPFS software is way too complicated unless you're super dedicated. But IPFS Desktop just runs in the background and the interface is crazy easy.
I must have found the protocol itself flawed in some way, like not censorship resistant enough, but must reconsider
It's probably not perfect, but what is. What I found is that storing and sharing files on my system alone made it visible to me within my home network, but not easy to find from outside of that network. Especially with a large video file, it can take some time before it starts to load for anyone else. I'm sure that could be improved somehow, but that was also a few years ago so maybe it already has. I use IPFS storage for some things, but less than I did because I'm not actually trying to store and share large files with others right now. Maybe I'll get back into something that is more of a motivation. But whenever I see someone trying to share videos without going through the corporate server systems, IPFS is the first thing that pops to mind.
I would say nostr.build but push comes to shove, someone could potentially censor it as it is a centralized service There are some decentralized, blockchain-based video hosting solutions Once you get a link, you can just distribute it on #Nostr nostr:nevent1qqsydmtx4d36uwtwleapddv7qjm0d8qhgezewdtky7q609fn2l99eucpz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wchsygqe3yp5u44c7crvwf85tgfvap9prpqkyx40wxp2rajkgwqtn3p8dvpsgqqqqqqsf5l99z
👀
I stopped using all platforms only #nostr now
Zap.stream or Flare
Is zap.stream decentralized? It doesn't look like it Can't even find Flare
Just stop being a racist terrorist nazi Problem solved
Blossom
I asked a very similar question recently ... and these were the replies. Nothing perfect yet, but it (hopefully) points in some promising directions. nostr:nevent1qqs2p9g3myvug03cppwddvyva9pl84exqmkwphdfu47n5dg9gsvh4lspzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43z7q3qkck3x6kh3krej5esvwy6ujp0g5e3af8ehec8ulc7e7zuyplappssxpqqqqqqzlf5ec6