 So, you created a YouTube channel and after a few years you have this large catalog of high quality videos that you've produced and you've gained a massive amount of followers and you're getting millions and millions of views and you're earning a rather nice living with the ad revenue from your YouTube videos and then one day you wake up and YouTube has deleted your channel. They've removed all of your videos and you don't even know why and then you appeal the decision and you hope that a real human being actually takes a look at your case and reinstates you but you never know. This is what's going on right now with Nick over at the Linux experiment. He had his channel recently deleted. He was doing a product giveaway on a live stream and I guess that was the problem that YouTube had, that product giveaway. But he thinks he followed all the rules for that product giveaway but they gave his channel a strike. They actually just deleted his entire channel and right now he's appealing the decision and trying to get his channel back up. Hopefully that will happen soon. Heck, by the time I edit this video and upload it today they may already have him back online but this is a real problem. This happens actually all the time, way too frequently. There are many, many instances of YouTube channels just being deleted sometimes for no reason, sometimes because of false trips of the algorithm where the algorithm thinks a YouTube creator violated the rules, the code of conduct, things like that but they really didn't. It's just a false flag but the YouTube channel gets deleted anyway then the creator has to appeal and hope somebody listens and then reinstates the channel. This unfortunately, again, it happens all the time and this isn't a free speech kind of issue because Google is a company, YouTube is a company and it's one of those things where when you're in somebody else's house you have to play by their rules. You know, you're in YouTube's house. You have to play by whatever set of rules they come up with and they can make you leave the house. They ask you to leave. You have to leave and that's one of the things that's unfortunate about these kinds of platforms, these centralized platforms. It's one of the reasons why I so heavily promote things like Odyssey, you know, as far as a decentralized video platform. You guys know I have an Odyssey channel and decentralized social networks like Mastodon and Diaspora and Lemmy and you got PeerTube also for a decentralized video platform. There's many of these things out there. There's dozens, hundreds of them, many of them I'm not associated with in any way but I do think those are the way forward especially for content creators because you never want to be able to be canceled. Any time you're in somebody else's house you can be canceled because you know you go to somebody's house. They can ask you to leave anytime they want for any reason they want. It doesn't matter what you did. If they say, hey, you got to go, you got to go. And what Nick over at the Linux experiment is he's experiencing right now. I feel sorry for the guy because I've dealt with it. I have had situations where my channel has been striped, falsely striped and I've had to appeal and they reverse it. I've never actually been striped. I've never had any issue with YouTube as far as anything legitimate. I have been flagged several times falsely and I've had to appeal and had to get it reversed. But I, you know, even though I've never had anything weird like that with my channel that I didn't get reversed, I do actually have two or three videos of mine that are demonetized right now that I've appealed the decision why these videos are demonetized. I can't get an answer. I can't get anybody at Google to look at it. So I've got some videos about Qtile. I think I got a video about Xmoned that have, you know, tens of thousands of views on it. I never got monetized for it. You know, it was probably several hundred dollars worth of revenue on those videos that I never received because they're not monetized because for some reason, YouTube decided that me opening up my Qtile config.pi and showing you guys a little bit of how to code in Python is somehow against their code of conduct, right? That's, you know, these are videos really like benign videos of me just bracing a tiling window manager and they're demonetized and they shouldn't be like there's no way these videos are against YouTube's policies in any way. There is just not possible. So I appeal and I'm assuming a real person is actually going to overturn the decision. No, I don't even know if a real person ever looked at it. The only thing I get is a second email saying, no, sorry. Like, yeah, they don't even tell me what is the problem with the videos. And that's the that's the thing is you have no recourse here, right? Whatever YouTube decides is what they decide and you're just at their mercy. So one of the things I really want to talk about today, I know we've got a lot of new viewers on the channel here in the last few months. And I know I haven't promoted it as much here recently, even though I'm one of the largest creators over on Odyssey. You guys, you really need to be over on Odyssey.com. Odyssey.com is a front end to the library protocol. And I've been on this platform for nearly two years now. And it is actually a rather large platform now. There are many, many content creators on this platform, many Linux creators, many tech creators, a lot of the big names you know, we're all over there. Why are we all over there? It's because, you know, many of us are kind of hedging our bets. We don't know what the hell is going on with YouTube. YouTube, again, can just delete a channel any time for any reason or for no reason, right? And again, you don't want to be in a situation where you can be canceled. You don't want to be in a situation where one day your channel is deleted, all your videos are deleted and they're not a mirrored somewhere else on the internet. Make sure that your content is always on some other platform other than YouTube. Because if it's just on YouTube, guess what? You're in for a big surprise one day. So I've been on Odyssey really since the early, early days of it. I'm one of the bigger channels actually on the platform. I've got over 35,000 followers over there. And I do get views on my videos over there because I promoted it heavily, especially in the early days. It's one of the things, you know, that I was on that early. And the Linux experiment, Nick, he does have a Odyssey channel. So he is singing his content over to Odyssey, too. So you guys, if you're wanting to check out his content, for some reason, he doesn't get his YouTube channel back. Of course, he does have an Odyssey channel. He has actually mentioned, I was checking out his Twitter feed that the reason he doesn't promote Odyssey that much is because he can't really monetize it. He can't make the kind of revenue he makes on YouTube, which I can understand that, especially these days. The price of LBC, the LBC credits that you get from donations over on Odyssey from your your fans, the price of LBC is just through the floor right now. It's worth like five percent of what it was at his highs a few months ago. And at its highs a few months ago, I actually could make a OK living if I really wanted to strictly on Odyssey now, because LBC is just practically worthless. You can't but still I'm really even if I would never make a dime off of LBC donations, I have created enough of a following. Enough people know me over on Odyssey. I could still leverage all of those followers, all of those views into monetizing through PayPal and Patreon and Merch and sponsorships, even if I wanted to go that route. Like, that's the point is, you know, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Make sure, you know, I get that YouTube is YouTube. It's got the most views. It's got that sense revenue and everyone loves it. So obviously, they don't want to spend time promoting stuff that there doesn't really make them any money, but you need to. You need to get on this early. So you guys, if you got YouTube channels and you're not on Odyssey, start sinking your content on Odyssey, start telling people about it. Tell them about it all the time because you want to be able to gain enough traction to where the time comes one day. You know, they just nicks my channel, right? Hey, I've got somewhere else. And you know, all my content is still up. I can still upload my videos on a regular basis just and never miss a beat. Yeah, I'll miss some of the views I was getting on YouTube. I'll miss that AdSense revenue, but I will be in a little bit better situation than if I didn't have this at all. Now, Nick, I will say that the giveaway he was doing, the product giveaway, that's a tricky situation. I would just advise people not to do those kinds of things. Anything Google, of course, is a US company, YouTube is a US company. So they got to abide by US law, especially when it comes to laws regarding gambling and lotteries, raffles, you know, these product giveaways kind of fall into that category. They got to be really careful what they allow you to do on their platform. And that's why they're really quick to ban people. So I would just avoid those kinds of product giveaways. I would also avoid any other tricky legal topics and topics that you know, YouTube is is going hard after a few months ago. They went really hard after financial channels, cryptocurrency channels, and they were banning just mass deleting a lot of those channels, those channels in that space. And the reason is because that space is filled with a lot of scammers. So a lot of innocent people, of course, got tripped up in the mass deletion. But again, what can you do? You don't really have a recourse if they delete you and you appeal and they reject your appeal. You're just out of luck. You definitely don't want to make any kind of crazy content that YouTube would have a hard time monetizing. Like if YouTube can't show ads on your videos because they're a little bit racy, off color, whatever it is you're doing, they can't show ads on your videos. Why would they want you on their platform? You're not making them any money because ultimately, you know, the few cents that they give you for those ads, you know, Google is making like 97 percent of that ad revenue. Google makes a ton of money off of you, the content creator. If they can't show ads on your videos, you're practically worthless to them. You actually you're worse than worthless because you're actually costing them money because all the bandwidth to host your videos. So many people don't realize this. If you're not able to be monetized, you're actually costing YouTube money. And why would they want a whole bunch of people on their platform that are costing them money? Right? It's in their best interest that then get rid of those people. So it's one of these things where you've got to be careful on platforms like YouTube, these private platforms. But ultimately, what I suggest you guys do, you content creators, check out decentralized video platforms. Right now, Odyssey is definitely the biggest challenger to YouTube. If you're not on Odyssey, go sign up. It's very easy to sync your YouTube channel to Odyssey, where when you upload to YouTube, it automatically gets pulled over to Odyssey as well. It takes like five minutes to sign up. So there's no reason for anybody that has a YouTube channel not to be on Odyssey. You guys that consume video content, if your content creators are over on Odyssey, watch them on Odyssey, support them on Odyssey, donate LBC credits to them because we need more creators and we need more viewers on the Odyssey platform. That way, when YouTube finally does just completely go under and one day it's going to happen, everything ends at some point. One day, YouTube is going to cease to exist and everyone on the platform, not just the few people that got screwed over because of false flags and the algorithms, all of us will eventually need to go somewhere else other than YouTube. And we need to start working that out right now. Now, obviously, Nick over at the Linux experiment, he needs some support right now. Right. So you guys, if you want to give him words of encouragement or see what he needs as far as support from the community, obviously as an Odyssey channel. So I guess you could try to message him or respond to videos over on there. I don't know if he reads messages on Odyssey. I know he has a Twitter account and it looks like it's very active. I don't have a Twitter account. So I can't really talk to him on Twitter because I have issues with Twitter. I actually had major issues with the powers that be over at Twitter because they allowed or still allowing actually fake distro tube accounts over on Twitter and I actually threatened legal action against Twitter at one point I I've had serious issues with Twitter. So I can't be on that platform. I refuse to be on that platform. But those of you that are, yeah, goes giving him some words of encouragement and see what he needs from you guys to maybe help get this thing reversed and hopefully get him back on YouTube soon. Now, before I go, let me thank a few special people. I want to thank the producers of this episode. Absi gave James Mitchell, Paul, Scott West, Akami, Alan, Chuck, Kurt, David, Dylan, Gregory, Hico, Mike, Erion, Alexander, Peace, Archon, Fodor, Polytech, River, Red Prophet, Steven and Willie. These guys, they're my has tiered patrons over on Patreon. These guys really help make it so that my channel isn't able to be canceled. Each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen as well. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. It's just me and you guys, the community. You like my work and want to support me, please subscribe to Distro Tube over on Patreon. All right, guys, peace. Subscribe to Distro Tube on Odyssey, too.