How to Make Your Business Censorship-Resistant

A friend of mine recently had ~30 of her videos taken down for allegedly violating YouTube’s TOS. (I’m being vague here to protect her privacy.)

In my opinion, the videos were innocuous, but they were about a topic that YouTube often freaks out about.

So, how do you make your work more resilient to censorship?

First, it’s not easy.

Most of the people creators want to reach use proprietary social media sites.

All of the major social media sites practice extensive censorship.

Furthermore, all traditional financial service firms face heavy government pressure to debank people who write about certain topics (weapons, sex work, drugs, election fraud, COVID, etc.).

Most people are lazy and impatient, and they are generally unwilling to learn how to use a new service.

However, this is the best strategy I know of right now.

The goal is to eliminate all of the chokepoints where censorship could be applied (short of being arrested and imprisoned).

Generally, this means:

1. Replacing proprietary services with open-source tools wholly under your control.

2. Replacing proprietary payment rails with crypto payment rails.

3. Replacing centralized points of failure (GitHub, DNS, web servers) with decentralized alternatives (Radicle, Handshake, Arweave).

4. Replacing non-private, transparent tools (Bitcoin, email) with anonymous tools (Monero, DarkIRC).

5. Replacing centralized governance structures (corporations, non-profits) with decentralized structures (DAOs).

Implementation Steps:

1. Make your own website backed by Odysee as your main video storage and distribution platform. Odysee is transitioning to use Arweave on the backend, so your content will be stored for 200+ years in a censorship-resistant manner. (Even if Odysee goes down or blocks you, your stuff will still be available on Arweave.) See the link about Odysee/Arweave below.

2. Put teasers (1-2 minute clips) on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and other popular but censorious platforms. Invite them to come to your website. You can also put full videos on Substack, Rumble, Pepperbox, Truth Social, and other less censorious proprietary sites if you want, but the goal is always to get them to your website and your mailing list, which is wholly under your control.

3. A future Operation Chokepoint is inevitable. When that happens, the more your finances are on crypto rails, the more easily you can continue to operate even if you get debanked. Set up a Patreon, BuyMeACoffee, Substack, Ko-fi, or SubscribeStar to make it easy for you to accept payment via credit card. If one of them closes your account, you still have a backup. But push hard for users to back you with private crypto paid directly to you on your own site (such as with BTCPay Server + Monero Plugin on your own website).

Strategies for Onboarding Your Audience:

1. Make it easy for people to find alternatives. Create a landing page with all of your links (website, mailing list, Signal groups, DarkIRC, Nostr, etc)

2. Explain to your user base the reasons why they should help you switch.

3. Offer discounts on your merch to people who pay with crypto.

4. Offer discounts to people who join your groups.

5. Release your best content on Odysee or your personal website 24-48 hours before it hits YouTube or TikTok.

6. Post a “safe for YouTube” version of a video on mainstream sites, but host the full, uncensored, or extended version exclusively on your censorship-resistant platform.

7. Close your YouTube or Facebook comments and announce that you will only be personally responding to comments on Odysee or your own blog.

8. Produce simple, 1-minute tutorials showing your less-technical followers how to set up an Odysee account or a Monero wallet.

9. Host your Q&A sessions or “Ask Me Anything” events on decentralized streaming platforms where you can speak freely without fear of a mid-stream shutdown.

10. Frame the switch as “Digital Archeology”–explain that by supporting you on Arweave, the audience is helping preserve your work for 200+ years.

11. Reward your most active followers on alternative platforms with exclusive badges, NFTs, or access tokens that grant special privileges.

12. Use your mainstream stories to show side-by-side proof of how the algorithms are throttling your reach, then link to the alternative where 100% of followers see your posts.

13. Use your mailing list to send direct links to your Arweave/Odysee content, bypassing the algorithmic “feed” entirely.

14. Market your personal website as a faster, ad-free, and tracker-free experience compared to the bloated apps of social media giants.

15. Coordinate with other creators in your niche to “take over” an alternative platform for a week, creating a temporary surge of high-value content.

16. Share data showing how much “Big Tech” takes in fees or advertising cuts compared to how much more of their support reaches you directly via crypto.

17. Allow your audience to vote on future topics or projects, but only if they are members of your mailing list or decentralized community.

18. Leverage features that big tech can’t or won’t offer, such as direct Monero tipping (tipxmr) or truly anonymous interactions.

19. Host contests where the only way to enter is to leave a comment or follow you on your open-source alternative.

20. Periodically remind your audience that a total ban is inevitable and that those who don’t follow you to the alternative now will eventually lose access to your work forever.

You may feel overwhelmed about the complexity of setting up your own mailing list / website.

One of the useful services that AI’s can provide is setting up these services.

If you tell AI’s what you want to do, they will guide you step by step through the process.

If you get stuck, cut and paste the error message into the chatwindow, and they will explain what went wrong, and help you fix it.