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LBRY

LBRY (pronounced "library")[4] is a blockchain-based file-sharing and payment network that powers decentralized platforms, primarily social networks and video platforms. LBRY's creators also created Odysee, an open-source video-sharing website that uses the network, which was split into a separate company on October 1, 2021.[4][5][6] Video platforms built on LBRY, such as Odysee, have been described as decentralized, fringe alternatives to YouTube.[7] Odysee lightly moderates content based on community guidelines; its web site delists videos containing pornography and the promotion of violence and terrorism, although delisted videos remain available on the platform's blockchain data store.[4]

Founded

2015 (2015)

2023 (2023)

,
United States

0.17.3.3 / April 30, 2021 (2021-04-30)[1]

LBRY, Inc.'s CEO was Jeremy Kauffman,[8] a libertarian activist[9] who was inspired to create LBRY to "provide people with choices for content", implicitly critical of the curated choices provided by YouTube.[10] The company closed in July 2023 after losing a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission which found that LBRY had sold unregistered securities.[11]

Content and users[edit]

The LBRY platform's video sharing websites have been described as an alternative to YouTube.[7] In 2017, LBRY, Inc. publicly archived 20,000 deleted UC Berkeley lectures from the university's YouTube channel after the US Department of Justice ruled that the videos violated the Americans with Disabilities Act due to a lack of transcription.[28][29] spee.ch, a media hosting site built atop the LBRY protocol, was used by groups such as Deterrence Dispensed to upload 3D printed firearm blueprints.[16][17] When LBRY, Inc. stopped supporting spee.ch in 2019 in favor of their new site, LBRY.tv, Deterrence Dispensed moved to LBRY.tv.[30]


The LBRY platform experienced a surge in popularity in late 2020 and early 2021, and LBRY, Inc. said in January 2021 that their new user sign-ups had increased to 250% from the previous month. Writing for The New York Times, Nathaniel Popper reported that many of the new users appeared to be supporters of former United States president Donald Trump and gun rights advocates who were suspended from YouTube.[7] Robert Hackett and David Z. Morris writing for Fortune attributed the increased interest in LBRY and other blockchain-based platforms to the choice by Twitter and other popular social networks to ban Trump and many others after the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[14]


As of April 2021, Odysee hosted 10 million videos, the most-viewed of which was a video challenging the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.[19] A May 2021 report by The Guardian found "scores of extremist videos" on the Odysee platform that promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories, glorified Adolf Hitler and other Nazis, shared COVID-19 misinformation, and depicted meetings and rallies by extremist groups including the white nationalist and antisemitic National Justice party and the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement.[31]


Megan Squire, a computer scientist and researcher of right-wing political extremism, described challenges faced by blockchains such as LBRY and the social networks built atop them: "As a technology it is very cool, but you can't just sit there and be a Pollyanna and think that all information will be free ... There will be racists, and people will shoot each other. It's going to be the total package."[7] Extremism researcher Eviane Leidig, writing for the Global Network on Extremism & Technology (GNET) at The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, described Odysee as "the new YouTube for the far-right", and wrote that although Odysee was "not inherently a platform for far-right or extremist content creators", it had become popular among them.[32]

Moderation[edit]

Because the LBRY network is built on a blockchain, there is no way for LBRY, Inc. to moderate at the blockchain level their users or the content that they upload.[7] LBRY, Inc. is able to moderate content on the websites they build on top of the protocol.[7][33] On LBRY's Odysee platform, guidelines prohibit content including pornography and promotion of violence or terrorism.[7][4] Rule-breaking content can be delisted from Odysee, which leaves the channel and content in place and continues to allow it to be shared, but prevents it from being found via search or browsing channels.[34] Most people access the protocol through websites including Odysee and LBRY.tv which are built on top of the LBRY blockchain.[7][4]


Todd Bookman writing for New Hampshire Public Radio described Odysee's approach to content moderation as "no censorship, no-deplatforming, no matter what users say".[19] When asked in July 2019 about the use of LBRY, Inc.'s sites to host blueprints for 3D-printed guns, LBRY, Inc.'s CEO Kauffman has said that he would only remove the files from his websites if courts deem them illegal. Champe Barton writing for The Trace has said Kauffman "signal[ed] his support" for the distribution of such blueprints by sharing them on his personal Twitter account.[35] On May 14, 2021, The Guardian reported that LBRY executive Julian Chandra wrote to Odysee site moderators that a "Nazi that makes videos about the superiority of the white race" was not grounds for removal from Odysee. The e-mail was accidentally sent to a user who had complained about neo-Nazi content on the platform.[31]

Comparison of video hosting services

List of online video platforms

Marshall, Andrew R. C.; Tanfani, Joseph (August 22, 2022). . Reuters. Retrieved September 7, 2022.

"SkewTube: New video-sharing sites thrives on misinformation and hate"

Official website