David Duke, former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, frequently posts videos on a website called Odysee. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones also streams his podcast, “The Alex Jones Show,” on the site. It works a lot like YouTube and attracts millions of views each month.

Anti-hate groups say the site is a hotbed of extremism where users from around the world — including promoters of U.S.-designated terrorist group the Nordic Resistance Movement, Holocaust deniers and Proud Boys supporters — use Odysee’s data storage and financial features to spread their views and raise money. Users also take advantage of the forum’s near complete lack of content moderation. The site’s CEO said he’s dedicated to keeping the company “censorship resistant.”

The site also comes with strong New England ties. Odysee was created by a now-defunct New Hampshire cryptocurrency company and began with seed money from a downtown Boston-based venture capital firm called Pillar VC, financed by a diverse constellation of local investors.

  • fpslem@lemmy.worldOP
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    2 months ago

    So the community guidelines aren’t being enforced? I still think that’s a problem. The federated video sites I’ve used (mostly peertube instances, tbh) all have community guidelines, and if they didn’t enforce them, I wouldn’t use the sites.

    • WolvenSpectre
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      2 months ago

      Even though they are smaller than YouTube a huge amount of video gets uploaded so they largely rely on reports. The issue is that for the reports to work, people have to actually got to watch their videos and, for their team to get to them, they have to get multiple reports. This was made worse by they capital expenditure they went through while fighting their classification.