There's a lot of talk these days about alternatives to the old dinosaur media. With corporations like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube doing everything in their power to drive away users, many are finding it nigh impossible to choose between the hundreds of alternatives using buzzwords like "censorship-free."
Unfortunately, almost every one of those alternatives is still just some corporation, with their own profits to focus on, with centralized servers, dependant on other centralized corporations. Remember all the times BitChute was taken down by their hosts? How about Parler? As long as you're using a centralized platform, you're going to run into the problems of centralization, regardless of who runs the company or where their political/ideological allegiances lie.
Luckily, there are true alternatives. And they're not even that new.
Today I'd like to talk to you about the two alternatives that I use (exclusively) for my content posting, viewing, etc., HIVE and LBRY. Both have existed for years (I've been on the HIVE blockchain since 2016 [in its old form: STEEM]), both are truly decentralized, both are totally censorship-resistant, and both pay you for your interactions.
HIVE
Pros:
- Almost 5 years of history, improvements, and even battling the first hostile takeover of a dPoS blockchain.
- Hyper community-oriented - We have a proposal system (a la DASH) to fund community projects, every tool & website was built by the community, and there are TONS of actual "communities" to interact with.
- You can earn rewards for commenting and voting on content, as well as posting your own. You also earn interest on your staked HIVE.
- Full smart contract & NFT capabilities - on one of the fastest & cheapest to use blockchains. While ETH transactions cost $15+, we've still got 0 fees and 3-second block times.
- https://peakd.com is a wonderful front-end, with TONS of options, and has eliminated much of the need to have multiple websites up at once to see all your data
Cons:
- Still a bit technical for the luddites. With voting power, hive power, various private & public keys, multiple front ends, and more... HIVE still isn't at a point where most people's grandmas can get it.
- Stake-based voting - While dPoS increases the security of the blockchain, it also means that a newbie with no money to invest isn't going to have a vote worth much, while a few "whales" can distribute a huge portion of the rewards pool. This problem has been there since the beginning, but has gotten better and better over time, and will continue doing so due to the decentralized way that new coins are printed (as opposed to a chain like Bitcoin, where the miners receive 100% of the new coins)
- The HIVE blockchain doesn't have built-in support for content besides text, HTML, JSON. There is currently 3speak.co for videos, but no real support for ebooks or audio.
- There isn't really a great means to find users you might be interested in, except to look at the "following" and "followers" list of other users you're interested in.
LBRY
Pros:
- LBRY accepts all types of content - videos, audio, PDFs, images, and much more, and content is stored in a decentralized P2P fashion (similar to torrents/IPFS)
- Very simple, easy to use, and the new front-end https://odysee.com is a no-brainer for YT users.
- There is a account sync program for those already putting their content on YT, read all about it here: https://lbry.com/faq/youtube
- Every view (from a registered account) gives rewards to content creators. No need for staking, in order to support & reward the content creators you enjoy.
Cons:
- The search engine isn't great... but that's part of the cost of not depending on Google.
- Mostly just the lack of content so far, but every one of you that joins helps solve that problem!
- The website and app are relatively intensive, using pretty new javascript, meaning your 10 year old macbook may not play nicely.
Getting Started
You can join both of these platforms for free, and start posting, viewing, and commenting for free. Simply head over to peakd.com for HIVE or odysee.com for LBRY, and click the sign up buttons.
If you'd like to give me a "referral" bonus on either one you can totally do so, but I'm not pushing that. Here are my referral links for LBRY and for HIVE.
I haven't really done any walkthroughs on LBRY yet, but you can check out my recent-ish "Hive Basics" video here: https://peakd.com/hive-181335/@kennyskitchen/hddwtpnc
If you run into any issues creating a HIVE account (like the need for phone verification), feel free to shoot me a message on Telegram (kennyskitchen, just like everywhere else) and I can create an account for you and send you the keys (then you need to immediately change them!)
Questions?
Please comment below, send me a message on telegram, or an email ([email protected]) if you've got any questions. I'm happy to help you start creating crypto abundance however I can, and I will probably make videos to help others get their questions answered as well!
My Social Medias
Videos: https://odysee.com/@kennyskitchen:9
Telegram Channel: https://t.me/kennysfeed
My Referral Link for LBRY/Odysee
LBRY embeds work on 95% of Hive front ends too. Odysee not yet, but LBRY works great.
Thanks, I didn't know that! I'd only tried Odysee, because I feel it's a preferable LBRY front-end to share with users in general, but that's a super important difference.
I usually link to odysee and embedded LBRY.
Man, I hope Lbry/Odysee takes off. We need a good YouTube alternative!
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