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"
Does it have an android app?
It does. You can get it on the Google Play Store or F-Droid. F-Droid version is very outdated though. You can always officially get the latest version directly from apk.odysee.tv.
I only found out about that link to the latest version a few days ago, and I was previously using the F-Droid version to avoid using Google services. I don't know how much better the latest version is, but my experience with the very outdated F-Droid version was that the app was very slow and laggy. I heard that performance tends to be quite good or terrible depending on your phone; my phone is just a cheap android phone from a few years ago, so it makes sense it didn't run well for me. I haven't tested the latest version yet.