Sigh, I have to agree with you strongly here, @Gillian . Even though we’d all like some alternative to come along to the Youtubes and Facebooks of the world (requiring virtually no effort on our part in the setup, other than new user account creation), whenever one of these comes along, which is a wide-open, poorly-moderated platform, then you are going to see what you just saw on Odysee: a bunch of marginal conspiracy theorists, etc. will congregate there, who got kicked off of Youtube and Facebook. Sadly these appear as suggestions alongside the content you were wanting to see: Ajahn Punnadhammo.
I hold a view, that many geeks commonly share, but non-geeks generally don’t have the experience or subtlety to understand: RSS is the way out of this mess (here’s my RSS feed, BTW). By anyone subscribing to my RSS feed, then my website isn’t just a random isolated website that virtually nobody visits (since everyone, by and large, is looking in popular sites like Youtube and Facebook), but rather my postings earn a place alongside all the other RSS feeds that one subscribes to. My content gains a place at the table of anyone who regularly looks to their RSS feed aggregator app for all their daily news, daily inspiration, or daily content. RSS performs no slimy privacy invasion, displaying of Ads, etc, unlike the Faustian-esque “Subscribe” and “Follow” buttons of all Social Media sites/apps.
Here’s a bunch of posts in a popular geek forum called “Hacker News” calling for a return to RSS:
- " It’s time to head back to RSS?" (with Discussion)
- “Why I Still Use RSS | atthislink” (with Discussion)
- “Please Add RSS Support to Your Site” (with Discussion)
- “RSS: there's nothing better” (with Discussion)
- “RSS Is Better Than Twitter” (with Discussion)
- “RSS is Wonderful” (with Discussion)
For example, there are several Buddhist Monasteries who publish RSS feeds right now, (which I subscribe to). Here they are (and you’ll need to copy and paste these links into an RSS feed aggregator app, don’t just click them in your web browser):
@dana, each Buddhist Monastery’s website with a Facebook link, would ideally also publish an RSS feed, allowing one to Subscribe to the news postings, new Dhamma Talks, etc, without having to use Facebook. I suggest requesting an RSS feed of every Buddhist Monastety’s website, which does not have one. RSS can always be added somehow or other, should there be sufficient demand for it. That’s the catch: it needs to be demanded, and furthermore sufficiently used. Content Management Systems like Wordpress and Jekyll include RSS functionality by default, BTW.
RSS is also the way around the flood of Fake News that will get published on all the wide-open, poorly-moderated platforms. Please check out GPT-3. It’s an AI that can generate fake news. Last I heard it was being used to generate something like 4.5 billion words per day. The entire Pali Canon of Buddhism, (the bible of Theravada Buddhism), takes up something like two whole bookshelves, and it only contains something like 6 Million words. Not Billion, with a “B”. When you RSS-subscribe to people with credible backgrounds, who are credible experts in their fields, and the postings come from credible websites where AI hopefully can’t post, that is your decent assurance that it’s not fake news.
In addition to RSS, all my Dhamma Talk Videos postings on my site have been digitally signed (plus a checksum). These are further bulwarks against fake news. Note the little paragraph at the bottom of each of my postings, here’s what it looks like on my latest posting:
Digital Signing and Checksum (of the .mp4 video file above):
- GnuPG signature: Ajahn_Subharo_Dhamma_Talk_Stream_066.mp4.sig; search for GnuPG pubkey 0x28e15963710c0624 here.
- SHA256sum: 15a031befbe95376d1b80dfe5ad70f139cfbacc69cc3403d1d426b1d9abecde4
No AI can cryptographically forge my GPG signature, without first breaking into my laptop, and stealing both my private GPG key file, and my passphrase. This would be in addition to breaking into my website, to post such forged signatures and checksums.