What is LBRY and WHY haven't I heard of it?
Last night I saw a video on YouTube talking about why people are leaving YouTube. Well...I guess it was more just venting.
I've heard about the crap regarding YouTube a lot, mainly on YouTube.
The irony doesn't escape me that they're complaining about censorship and viability and often YouTube is the one that recommends these videos to me. Sometimes they're from people I follow, and sometimes they aren't.
But, what they're talking about are REAL problems that can totally possibly drive many people away from YouTube, mainly creators, and possibly even kill the platform in many ways.
There will still be a lot of users checking YouTube, and different creators putting things up there...but it will actually possibly become what exactly these creators fear, just a place for all these studios to shove their free content to get eyes.
For me, that actually does have some appeal. Well, that part of YouTube that is. I like watching some late night hosts. I like watching my news on YouTube, because I can choose what stories I watch, and they have an app with all these different things I want to watch, versus having to check each individual app for the news from different sources.
This is ironically the same issue that these idiots often fail to address, and is becoming an issue with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Paramount, Disney, and whatever the fuck other service these idiots are going to launch. I don't wanna check 3 or 4 apps, let alone 6. I bet piracy is going to rise again due to these dumb fucks.
Anyway, some ways into the video whinging about YouTube, and the very real problems with it, it suddenly turns into an advert about LBRY.
What is LBRY?
Well, in many ways it's like a competitor to us here at Steem. It's been around for quite a while too.
It's a platform having something to do with blockchain, where people upload their videos, books, and pictures, and can charge for them. They take zero percent, and there are no credit card fees or anything, because it's crypto, so you can do things like charge 1/1000th of a cent per view. Or you can charge 5 cents. Or whatever you want.
Sounds pretty cool right?
So why haven't I heard of LBRY before?
Well...maybe I had and just forgot about it...but the reason I hadn't heard about it became pretty apparent once I managed to get the app on my phone and check it out.
First I tried to download it on my computer...
That was a bit of an annoyance fest. The webpage actually recognized I was on Linux and directed me to a Linux download, which is kind of refreshing. I'm not used to that much on Linux. Except it was a Debian package. I'm not on a Debian variant. So I checked my package manager. There was only the unstable git version available. Because installing a Debian package is a little annoying, but not impossible, and I didn't really want to write a custom install script, I went about modifying a few config files to install the latest git version. Then, halfway through, I noticed that a lot of the required packages are Python packages.
Could it be that this is a python library? Can I install this with PIP?
Short answer is yes...but I have no idea how to get a client running. But I got the library installed, and I totally wanna check out what I can do with it later!
So after getting the library installed with PIP, I got lazy and just installed it on my phone.
Once I had it on my phone and launched it, it kinda became immediately apparent why I hadn't really heard much about LBRY. Not only was it likely a bitch to install, with the idiots not even making a web version of it, but looking at the videos that were on Trending and the front page of the app...made me think that maybe we don't have it so bad here...yet.
LBRY is very clearly suffering from exactly the problem I fear we may eventually have...especially when we market ourselves to people that are fleeing YouTube.
Sure, bringing in normal YouTubers that are just tired of the shit on YouTube is great. There are many awesome YouTubers. Many of them might not like starting from scratch though.
But the real problem is that some of those people have been chased off YouTube for kinda good reasons. Sure, they deserve their right to free speech...but to normal people, it looks really bad if they manage to get to a dominate position.
Sorry, but crazies and racists don't look good on the main page.
These people make normal conversations very cringe worthy. It's a talent.
They deserve their right to freedom of speech...but it's understandable why YouTube doesn't want to promote them.
YouTube was actually having a problem for quite some time where it seemed like as soon as you watched one video suddenly YouTube recommended a bunch of radical videos to you. It actually does the same thing with videos by stupid annoying people. I hope you know what I mean.
I swear...I watch ONE YouTube video with clickbait in the title and suddenly it wants me to watch the worst big YouTubers on the platform.
LBRY's app is also pretty damn buggy.
It crashed quite a few times on me. Several times it crashed multiple times in a row on me. I'm not really that used to Android apps crashing on me anymore. It's been a while.
The app also doesn't even really support detecting when you turn your phone. It's really quite sad. I'm used to being able to just turning my phone to the side and being able to watch a video full screen. You can click the full screen button...but then it's upside down compared to the way I usually like to watch my videos... It was annoying.
The app also doesn't support fast forwarding. I've gotten kinda used to tapping to fast forward. The only way to fast forward in a video in the LBRY app is to click somewhere on the progress bar at the bottom. This is annoying...but livable.
It also doesn't support watching a video at different speeds. Okay...so I have no patience and can't stand to listen to people talk slow...at least not in person. Pick up the pace! You're wasting my life. This was the most annoying thing next to the crashes.
So LBRY is still pretty newbish...but still kinda cool.
I am absolutely interested in LBRY. Until I find out some info about how they did something horribly and I shouldn't be interested. They have their niche...and it's actually not that complicated, if they do it right. People are used to buying stupid tokens in apps that are only usable in that app. Imagine if they just make buying and earning tokens just like that, easy. Then watching a vid for a few cents or a fraction of a cent won't be that big of a deal. I'd pay a few cents for certain videos. Other ones...not so much. They just gotta sort out their bugs and make it easier to use.
They also actually have an opening for these stupid apps that pay you in crypto for watching ads. If you got crypto for ads that you watch, then could easily spend it on videos, that's better than a stupid app that just has ads. They don't really want to do ad supported vids...but the capability is open there if someone wanted to do it.
I would like to see web pages and apps that show vids from LBRY and Steem and maybe YouTube and it's competitors too. I think front-ends that are platform agnostic are the future, so people can use whatever platform they want, and not be locked in.
So I'll be paying attention a bit more to LBRY, and other services, and maybe playing around with it in Python. Maybe even mess around with making my own app for it, for the fun of it. I don't really have the time to make a real one, and haven't really ever done apps.
I just hope they don't end up getting more and more extremist fringe creators, and push them, because it really does look bad.
Thanks for your review and thoughts on LBRY! Linux is the platform with the most variations and issues, because of all the different OS flavors. The app is much more stable on the Windows and Macintosh versions. No excuses, we are working on making the Linux experience better. You can join us and add your Linux issues at our Github. We're Open Source, and we rely on our community to help build LBRY. Here are the open Linux issues: https://github.com/lbryio/lbry-desktop/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+linux
As far as free speech goes, this is what LBRY is all about. Our blockchain is censorship resistant, which means you can't be deplatformed or censored. This also means potentially undesirable content will be available, but we believe in your ability to choose what kind of content you want to see.
The bigger issue is discoverability - finding the stuff you want, and not a bunch of unrelated or low quality content. This is an ongoing project we're working on, and you can see our full roadmap here: https://lbry.com/roadmap
Another thing you mentioned was LBRY being a competitor to Steem: I don't see it that way. Steem has a great ecosystem and projects, and ideally LBRY can be used with Steem and Steem apps. I believe there is strength in blockchain apps working together to bring the masses into the decentralized world.
Once again, please come have a look at our resources:
Download the app: https://lbry.com/get
Visit our Discord: https://chat.lbry.com
Try our beta web app: https://lbry.tv
Contribute to our Github: https://github/lbryio
Thank you, Steemians! We welcome you to LBRY. If you come to our Discord and mention Steem, we'll give you a little LBC to get started.
I haven't even tried it on Linux yet. I tried it on Android. It crashed many times there.
It kinda is a competitor in a way. We also have video sites. Well...we're down to at least one. It has a web interface though. :P When it comes to writing though, it's something that can be used alongside Steem possibly, for content that remains valid for longer than just 7 days. We have some ways to sell things here, but they're still in their infancy.
So you could write a book here, edit it, and sell it on LBRY as well as the Steem stores. Which I'm now considering with my own book.
But, you guys need front-ends. People need to be able to easily link people to their content there, to sell it, or just allow access to their vids.
LBRY for Android is very early beta yet - many features from the app are still being added. Additionally, we are working on LBRY on the web, and you can see a preview of it here: https://beta.lbry.tv. It's great for watching videos in that you don't have to download them like you do with the app, but the user account functions aren't there yet. I see LBRY as being complimentary to Steem powered projects like Steemit. I believe if there was a way to convert cryptocurrency seamlessly in the background without the user having to be involved, that could open up a lot of possibilities for more blockchain projects to work together instead of having to compete.
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It seems to me, youtube is the one causing people to leave their platform with these sort of new regulations they are upto
Yep. YouTube has been making a bunch of mistakes when reacting to various things, like advertisers being dicks & leaving to make it look like they care. But, they also ignored a ton of very questionable content on their platform for a long time. So they've basically been in panic mode.
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I'm glad to see there are new options available for YouTubers even if they're not steem based it gives them an idea and gets them used to spreading their content across various platforms instead of relying solely on YouTube. I'd say all creators should be posting cross-platform and seeing where they get the best response or experience and double down and migrating their audience
I've already seen a few YouTubers only spot snippets on their channel and self host their free videos on Wistia or something like that and embed it in their sites to serve ads etc.
People are looking for alternatives
Yeah, they should have been cross-posting for a while tbh. You can't put all your eggs in one basket, as the saying goes, because then when that basket breaks... Plus, you get other followers on other platforms, which may end up following you on others as well, so you end up getting more followers everywhere.
You also get paid better if you do it right.