My journey in decentralized video: From D.tube to LBRY
D.tube was the first Steem dApp I used many years ago, well besides Steemit I guess. I found the dApp extremely useful and it was a one of a kind. Another perk was getting a dtube upvote, which was mostly funded by misterdelegation. An account that was owned by at the time Steemit and now is Justin Sun's.
My first dApp node
I was so into D.tube I spun up my own IPFS node to upload my videos, and to change the fee given to Dtube. So I could get more rewards, I still gave back 1% to D.tube. Also by hosting my own videos it increased the stability of playback. I could even give people URLs directly to my server to play the videos if D.tube had troubles playing at the time. It proved useful on more than one ocasion. Thanks alot to the @onelovedtube community for the help setting it up. @techcoderx and @gray00 especially.
That all changed with the hardfork
With the fork to Hive, that delegation is no more as it was not included in the hard fork. So now a dtube upvote is only a fraction of what it used to be.
Besides that, I saw some moderation on dtube I did not agree with. The Christchurch video comes to mind. It was uploaded to Dtube, but then downvoted into to zero by the founder of Dtube. He also left a comment saying the user was stupid for uploading that. It was a very emotional knee jerk kind of comment. I was disappointed with how this was handled.
Many do not support uploading active shooter videos, but my beliefs for freedom of speech include videos. And I found this disturbing in the way it was chilled on the Steem blockchain.
A few months back I saw a post by @lordbutterfly and it really was the final nail in the coffin for me to use such a platform.
Welcome to LBRY
Ive been keeping track of LBRY since 2016, but for the longest time their coin was just that.. A coin and not much else. About two years ago I learned about one of LBRYs new dApps called Spee.ch and it was on github allowing others to spin up their own instance. With the help of one of the LBRY devs I was able to build my own media server with a full LBRY node running on the server. This allowed my content to be synced on the blockchain pointing my media to my server for viewing. Also makes for a great way to prove content is yours, its in the block with a timestamp and all. Not that I ever had someone try to steal my content or challenge me on it.
Running my own Spee.ch node
I used this Spee.ch server for about a year and really learned alot about running a node on, and how to make use of a dApp on a server I run. I even went as far as to build visualizations for me to see where users around the world were viewing my pictures and videos. It was quite a fun project.
https://www.publish0x.com/solominer/adding-monitoring-and-dashboards-to-my-servers-xnqjyd
Pictures are broken in the blog as I shut down my Spee.ch server recently. I did this because there is now LBRY.tv and I really dont have a need for my Spee.ch server anymore.
I created an account and logged in, and started uploading videos. Playback of these videos have not been at problem at all unlike D.tube. Also the LBRY discord is very friendly and helpful, they will even tip you in LBC occasionally for supporting the community and making use of their Discord.
@scottcbusiness a content creator on Hive, Publish0x and LBRY made a video giving tips on how to get more engagement on the LBRY.tv platform. And talked about a feature called "supports".
Supports and staking
Staking Hive can increase your popularity and rank on the blockchain. Many see it as something to work towards and look up to people with large stakes. These people are able to bring others content up and to give greater rewards for posts and comments.
There is staking on LBRY as well. But its referred to as "supports". You can add stake or "supports" to a video you uploaded. Or just to your profile so any content you post will be ranked higher on the platform. Meaning it will show up more in the platform for users, bringing more engagement to your content if people find it useful and valuable.
So how much stake is needed to get noticed? I have no idea.. haha I already had about 2500 LBC in supports. I earned these LBC by promotion the platform and earning them from the Discord by showing my posts.
Though looking through the more popular users like @ivanontech and others. They have tens of thousand if not hundreds of thousand of LBC in support.
With LBC dropping in price back from a recent run up I figured this would be a good time to invest and buy a substantial amount of LBC to put into supports.
Overnight one of my gaming videos was being reposted, and then a second time this morning and views to my videos have doubled! I am excited to see my weekly lbry report next time I get one. I have never gotten a repost before so this is new and probably because of the supports I added.
LBRY weekly report before I added supports
At this time I have 342 followers on LBRY, I forgot how much it was before I added alot of supports but pretty sure it was in the 200s. If thats so, ive gained almost a 100 followers over night.
So it would seem that supports are a great way to get noticed on the platform. LBRY has come along way since 2016 when I first noticed it. And glad to say ive now invested in a platform I believe will go places.
Ways to earn LBC for supports
You can mine them using a GPU or FPGA
In Q3 2020 LBRY is planning on "Utilize disk space provided by users pro-actively. Offer rewards and benefits for this" From what I can tell this means if you allow LBRY to use some of your hard disk space it will reward you in LBC for it. Hard disk mining so to say.
Interacting on LBRYs Discord
Making milestones in your LBRY account like follower count, watch rewards for videos, invites and reposting content.
I am glad I have choices now for uploading my content, back when D.tube was the only option for something decentralized. Now I have other opportunity and glad I found LBRY. Looking forward to their new features on the roadmap and to the growth LBRY sees as cryptos gain more traction.
Addresses below to help me buy better camera equipment and support me to travel to locations to do photo and video and overall great blogs in new places. I would be happy to list some of the contributors in my posts for donations that help me along the way.
| Coin | Address |
|---|---|
 BTC: | bc1qhfmvd2gywg4fvrgy2kkkkyqta0g86whkt7j8r7 |
 LTC: | ltc1qdyzm5cwgt8e2373prx67yye6y9ewk0l8jf3ys9 |
 DASH: | XkSqR5DxQL3wy4kNbjqDbgbMYNih3a7ZcM |
 ETH: | 0x045f409dAe14338669730078201888636B047DC3 |
 DOGE: | DSoekC21AKSZHAcV9vqR8yYefrh8XcX92Z |
 ZEN: | znW9mh62WDSCeBXxnVLCETMx59Ho446HJgq |
Well. Nicely explained your Dtube journey and after HF, the problems. I had no idea on LBRY.tv. But you have informed some necessary information on lbry. I shall try to learn it more for my video content sharing. Thanks
Thank you.. yeah check it out it may be worth it to you.
The Christchurch video was an appropriate action because our government made it illegal with prison time to anyone sharing it regardless of country. New Zealand has a number of countries it has extradition orders with.
D-Tube would be on the hook for that regardless if they shared it or not so it kind of makes sense. The idea that people would actually want to see that kind of sickens me too. Snuff videos are illegal in most countries and an online platform should not be exempt from that regardless of intention.
A decentralised platform must not be above the law otherwise its users are nothing more than anarchists. Somewhere along the way a line MUST be drawn. It's not blocking freedom of speech to block these types of videos. It's protecting citizens from content that is damaging to them. There's actually a huge difference that people don't seem to realise.
Decentralisation is a great idea and is literally the basis for the internet but even the early internet had controls over it.
@woodenwookie
thanks for the response and taking the time to write out how you feel on the subject. Though I disagree with most of what you said.
Yes I saw NZ pass some laws that make viewing this activeshooter video illegal for their citizens. Looks like you are a NZ resident so I understand why you would support this banning, maybe you even knew people affected by this tragedy.
I have a feeling Dtube is not as decentralized as we may think, making them beholden to some takedown requests and other regulation that comes with running a website with obvious owners attached to the registrar. LBRY has already stated once its on the blockchain it cannot be removed. They can deindex the results on LBRY.tv and other front ends. But the data is still on chain. So I am happy to see that platform take a more solid stance on content. Dtube really never gave their stance, and the say Christchurch happened they made it quite clear. Such events are litmus tests for these platforms claiming to be decentralized and I pay close attention to how they handle the events as they unfold.
NZ cannot police other countries and the internet. They tried and failed, I saw many cases where the NZ police were contacting US based websites demanding they take down the video, and to collect IPs of those viewing it. I was pretty shocked they tried to reach so far in restricting data. A dozen websites were blocked in NZ and Australia by their local ISPs. Something similar to what Iran did during the Arab Spring. Which to me was pretty disturbing.
BTW I found that list and D.tube and Steemit.com was on that list, though using dApps such as esteem, partiko and steempeak could circumvent such actions. Many NZ and Au citizens came to Discord and got help so they could once again view content on Steem blockchain. VPNs also work wonders, and funny how some governments are trying to ban those too. Eventhough they are an essential tool for people working from home for some businesses.
I also saw NZ approach the US government demanding they enact the same restrictive viewing and blocking of websites hosting it and we came back with "no" as the answer.
You see, when you block one kind of content its a slippery slope. And trying to protect citizens from information has proven disastrous over the years. Protecting citizens is very subjective and politicians and others that want to control will use that to their advantage.
I do believe blocking these videos is chilling freedom of speech. As data is considered freedom of speech regardless of what is made of.. Its all data and trying to block it based on "protecting citizens from content that is damaging to them" is completely unacceptable and is asking for select people to censor what they want and when they want.
As for your comment about the early internet, its always been centralized. And Im hoping we can move away from such vulnerable structures with the platforms ive talked about.
Im going to finish my comment with what one of the United States founding fathers said on the subject of giving up freedom for protections.