To ease confusion from the start, LBRY (said as *Library*)is actually a decentralized blockchain and protocol (think email) that allows one to publish, transfer, stake, and share content. Basically what would happen if you did with media what was done with Bitcoin. While not in any way like NFTs, it does bear some similarities. The main one is that it involves art and digital currency transactions.
The main form of currency in the LBRY ecosystem is the LBC, or *Library Coin*/*Library Credit*, which is a fork of Bitcoin with a different focus.
Users have wallets and channels. The wallets hold LBC and the channels are one of the main ways to earn LBC. "Ways" here means that you can actively earn LBC by posting content ranging from videos to images, sound, text/Markdown, PDFs, what-have-you! It also means that you can passively get LBC for simply viewing content, following folks, etc.
Watch a video, get your daily LBC reward.
Follow 10 folks, get more LBC.
Follow 100, get even more.
Get followers, get LBC.
Also, you can buy LBC the good ol-fashioned Christian way by buying it at your local crypto-exchange. You can also earn randomly by helping the project with websites, dev work, translations... The LBRY folks are really nice and generous.
So, ya get the LBC crypto for interacting actively or passively. You can be an activist with a referral link and code like mine here to get sum that way (yes it's redirected to Odysee now, lbry.tv is being phased out). Folks can also tip you some LBC if they liked it, and honestly this makes more sense than likes/dislikes. With a tip, someone decided "I know, your content was worth 1 LBC to me (or $0.22)!" and you get that LBC from them. Likes/dislikes in the traditional way simply acted as a weighted scale that determined the success of your content. With LBC, you essentially weigh the visibility of that content in your hands. You tip more, that gets staked more in the content, the content gets more visible, etc. You don't like, don't tip. No tip means no extra stake and no boost for content.
Brilliant, which I ain't.
Content can be delivered via centralized servers (such as the soon-to-be-gone lbry.tv and the newcomer Odysee) or the community-driven P2P (peer-to-peer). This ensures a lack of censorship as there are many avenues to get that content you crave. Government takes down Odysee because, you know, y00genics-t00b3 tells them too... you still gots it on the app. It's an electron app for desktop, so it works nearly everywhere. It's on Android and with iOS is a bit iffy, but that's obvious as crapple wanna control your experience more than scroogle (please leave apple, google, and microsoft; convenience is not worth the sacrifice of privacy).
Odysee
Odysee is a frontend for LBRY.
Nuff said.
It is the web interface as the beautiful, minimalist lbry.tv will be retired in favor of the traditional apps and Odysee. So Odysee must be pretty good, right?? Yup, unless you are a minimalist like me.
LBRY has an initial problem: how to find stuff.
It's like an old Zelda game, just go exploring.
You might stumble upon something neat, might not.
Odysee is pretty much like lbry.tv but with a more purple-y interface and more options for discovery.
Comparitively speaking, you have maybe 5 options on the left for accessing content in lbry.tv:
- Home
- Following
- Your Tags
- Discover
- Library
Very simple, very minimalist, very niiiiice.
Now for the Odysee:
- Home
- Following
- Cheese
- Big Hits
- Gaming
- Lab
- Tech
- News & Politics
- Finance 2.0
- The Universe
- Movies
- Wild West
See what it does there?
Genres.
Categorization.
Easy access to commonly popular topics and areas of content.
Odysee was launched as the semi-decentralized, direct competitor to YouTube. A tongue-in-cheek joke: on the landing page you will see a simple header filled with a quirky quote. The first one I can remember seeing right after hearing of it's launch... in a mix of... blue, yellow, green, red?
"Don't be evil."
The first quote showcased the intent: youtube has become too evil in the hands of google and lost sight of what mattered: creators. It let the greed and love of money pervert it into a crony, corporate-elitist's playground to screw over any that question the narrative. They started with Alex Jones & conspirists, conservatives, progressives, and now anyone that they deem a threat to their ad-revenue. Odysee: what's that? You cancelled? Come over here, post crap, join the movement of decentralized tech and true content freedom (mind you, no po-po/snu-snu and no murderstuffz okaythanks).
LBRY has porn. Odysee does not.
LBRY is ad-free. Odysee is not.
For the illusion of convenience with the mindset of freedom, Odysee compromises both to create a youtube alternative that actually doesn't suck. With the Gumby-like astronaut mascot doing that pose thing it does, Odysee seeks to hit google where it hurts.
The now-endangered species of Youtubers are slowly dying out in the polluted heap of crony smog that is the google environment. You have to censor yourself. You have moving goalposts. You have to conform. Otherwise you aren't monetized. You can't successfully run an account without a gmail address. google puts up so many roadblocks and barriers to make it practically impossible to manage a youtube account. I've tried outlook, protonmail, mail.com, and other mail service providers. youtube always whines about suspicious activity and requires phone authentication. We all know the lies, it's so they can track you who is smart to avoid their flytrap of a "platform". You wait and wait for the security code, nada, nada, nada! Try again, you immediately get the old one sent.
Now for the Odysee exclusive: you don't get that crap.
You give an email, get a wallet address, get to work.
Simple verification via email and you can always set a password later.
Is it no wonder that many HUGE youtubers have jumped ship over to Odysee or are transitioning over?
Big Clive, Louis Rossman, Veritasium, Thoughty2, Anton Petrov, David Packman, Tim Pool, DistroTube, etc... That's just a few. And you start earning as soon as you join, no roadblocks to keep you out while letting the crony crooks in.
Elongated rant aside, the LBRYfolk felt the pains of many and did something about it. Odysee gives that populist hit that's needed in the world of tech.
It's a bit behind peertube in terms of streaming, but it's getting closer and closer. It's looking at Roku apps and smartphone apps as well. And that's just the frontend to the decentralized universe of LBRY.
StoryFire
Every now and then, it gets cold.
You need to warm up, so you make a fire.
But you're stuck hanging around the fire lest you freeze to eternal death as a snowperson.
Whaddya do? Tell stories.
StoryFire takes that approach with the same vengance that Odysee has.
The difference? It's completely centralized.
Made by a Youtuber peeved with the cronyist takeover of the praries of Classic Youtube, StoryFire sought to be a way to rectify many issues. Ya know how these youtubers have their own patreon, their own twitter, their own youtube, all their presence spread across multiple platforms to communicate with their oh-so beloved audience? A PITA (not to be confused with PETA, which can be confused with the other PETA, I like meat)... wait, what was I saying again? Ah, PITA. A pain in the aorta that comes more from having to look, search, ask, etc "are you on `[x]`?" or "do you have a `[y]`?" and then an answer of "`[z]`". Not cool. Apparantly many folks can't afford the $3-8 for a simple domain name and host a site via github or something.
But as I digest (my wonderful meaty dinner of chicken, beef, and all kosher animals), the website is not important. The communication is. To have something that you can interact with because people are social creatures that like to talk and stuff. So much so that after 12 attempts screaming for them to shut up over the phone, they continue to persist telling you the same thing they just told you five seconds before...
Crap. Did it again.
Folks like communication and interaction. It's a small dopamine hit we need every now and then. StoryFire realizes the stress from managing multiple platforms to do one thing and merges it all. Perfectly. Not the stress, but the multiple platform thinghymajig. I can communicate and feel welcomed there, getting kind remarks from like-minded folks that love the variety!
You can make social posts (microblogs like twitter) and do written stories (that you can earn Blaze on BTW, the LBC for StoryFire). You can message others. You can also apply for and make video posts (assuming you are allowed to). Crap. Paperwork. Video posting permission application.
That's kinda sucky on top of the centralization. This is the pet project of two people that's growing. It's closed-source. Despite millions being poured into it, it's not ready to be up there with youtube.
Manual reviews do two things: prevent those cronies from getting in, and keeping the spam out. Good youtuber content is what they look for and want. The review can take anywhere around 3 months and you need a few videos and a trailer up and running or a detailed overview of what you will do there. You need to estimate how many videos you will upload and how frequently you shall upload them. Not exactly the best for newcomers that haven't gotten their grift down yet. But boy the interaction. It's actually got more interaction on it than LBRY/Odysee.
And now for the lineup....
All Three
The quick-n-dirty:
- LBRY
- Decentralized
- Earn after signup
- Multiple forms of content
- Minimalist
- Apps
- Odysee
- Better to explore than LBRY
- Sticks it to youtube
- Balances convenience with decentralization
- Limited interaction
- No app yet but coming to many platforms
- StoryFire
- Centralized
- Earn after signup
- Multiple forms of limited content
- Wonderful interaction
- App
They are all tantalizing platforms with different niches to look at.
They all have their strangths and weaknesses.
They all put you first.
Thanks for reading,
and HattyHacking;
