Odysee, a decentralized video sharing platform that’s built on the LBRY blockchain, has almost doubled its traffic since last week.
In a press release, the platform wrote that since last week’s events, traffic to Odysee has grown by 80-100% and increased to around 1.4M-1.5M visitors.
Odysee also noted that Silicon Valley’s censorship is contributing to “the rise of smaller social networking platforms and apps that welcome free speech and varying opinions.”
Additionally, the platform predicted that its pro-free speech stance will ultimately serve as a “successor model” for the current centralized Big Tech platforms:
“Odysee’s welcoming stance to creators of all beliefs and persuasions is what will ultimately help its community last and can serve as a successor model for the current big tech. Use of the blockchain helps to give some of the power and responsibility that is currently centralized in big tech back to the people instead.”
Odysee’s rapid uptick in traffic follows Big Tech’s mass censorship since last week’s storming of the US Capitol. Tens of thousands of users, including the President of the United States, have had their social media accounts permanently suspended and the tech giants have outright banned the use of certain phrases and discussions related to the 2020 US presidential election.
This unprecedented level of censorship has resulted in an exodus to alternative platforms such as Odysee. Other alternative platforms, including free speech social network Gab messaging app Telegram, have also seen massive growth over the last week.
“No social media site is actually sophisticated enough in their design to prevent the spreading of links if people are willing to type them in,” CEO and Founder of Odysee Jeremy Kauffman said. “The only set of facts that fits what we witnessed last week was a group of powerful people finding a way to accumulate even more power to themselves. If we care about the future of democracy, we must use services where this power does not exist.”
